Rat!

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There's a rat in my apartment, or a roof-rat (which is or is not a type of rat?). I think it's too big to be a mouse. Actually, I don't know that it's still in the apartment. I suspect it roams the building. This is the first time I got a good look at it, and assuming it's the same thing I saw before, it's bigger than I thought. I have mentioned it to my land-lord though I haven't seen much in the way of results. Will send letter, standard and certified, tomorrow, but in the mean time, any suggestions?

I have had baited traps of various sort set up for a while now, but it doesn't seem interested in them.

I am thinking of buying pepper spray and waiting until I hear it in the kitchen again.

There were a ton of mouse traps in the cabinet under the sink, which I only discovered after I moved in.

I really do despise land-lords (this is a supposedly "nice" apartment in a nice neighborhood), but meanwhile--what do I do about this thing?

I did not want to have to move this summer, but between this ongoing rat problem and my downstairs neighbor's noise, it looks like it might be that time again.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:37 (twenty-two years ago)

get a kitty

― the surface noise (electricsound), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:41 (twenty-two years ago)

poison it.

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:42 (twenty-two years ago)

poor kitty

― the surface noise (electricsound), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Have you tried rat poison? It works for flatmates who try to steal your cheese.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm allergic to cats (and have enough allergies already that it matters).

Poison it and then have rotting rat corpse odor for a month after?

I have had two experiences of catching mice in bags, and one of cornering what I now think was a roof-rat and mashing it with a box, so I think I might be able to catch it in the kitchen and spray it with pepper spray. This is the second time it's come out when I have had a bag a trash sitting on the kitchen floor (because my trash-can was too full and I was being lazy). It was chewing a hole in the trash-bag. Anyway, that seems to be a big attraction for it, unlike the dried fruit I have in several traps, although dried fruit was the recommended bait at several sites I checked (with excess gullibility, probably).

surface noise, I was going to make the same joke but wasn't quite sure how to phrase it. For instance: Why buy the kitty if I'm only going to poison it?

I wish I could bomb it like you do for fleas. (I know, typical American.)

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe I should just poison it.

I do think it's a roof-rat and not just an ordinary rat, which makes me feel that I am mainting some sort of middle class respectability.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:53 (twenty-two years ago)

mainting=maintaining

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:53 (twenty-two years ago)

HAHA! Big poison then.

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:54 (twenty-two years ago)

If I poison it, I'd better put the poison in a plastic trash bag first, mixed with some strong smelling cheese, or it will never eat the poison.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember when my room-mate and I went to buy bombs to kill some fleas (that probably came with furniture his relatives had given us). The women in the do-it-yourself extermination store seemed as if she was brain-damaged from being around too many poisons or something. We had some sort of routine where we used to imitate her and say, "You want to kill the dog?" "No, no, we don't want to kill the dog." (We didn't have any pets anyway.) See, aren't problems wonderful? All the happy memories they bring.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 04:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the problem is systemic. Maybe I should set the building on fire.

They keep it well maintained in a superficial way, but then you look at the basement and you know the building has serious problems.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Poison will maintain the respectability, however. Fire might frighten the neighborhood association.

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:06 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a law firm in the building next to me, and an (ASSHOLE!) attorney in the apartment below me, so I might be leaving myself open for some legal hassles.

But seriously, what if the rat goes and dies in some inaccessible place in the walls?

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Get a ferret

― nate detritus (natedetritus), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:11 (twenty-two years ago)

it will stop smelling eventually and then you will find a flat leathery thing one day in the attic

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"Rats is life."

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:21 (twenty-two years ago)

you could get one of those electronic thingies that plugs into an outlet and emits a noise that is supposed to drive them away

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't poison it (for the reason you mentioned). Get a glue trap and bait it with chocolate, peanuts, and/or peanut butter & cheese crackers. This means you will have to dispose of it yourself, possibly while it is still alive, but it sounds like you've done that before.

― nickn (nickn), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

what the hell is a roof rat?

i was going to suggest a glue trap as well.

Also, don't leave garbage out on the floor.

Kitties are the best though. Whenever I've had rodents in my house/apt. . .well they haven't been there for long. heh.

― A Girl Named Sam (thatgirl), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Whenever I bait the glue traps with food, they always end up getting caught in the ones w/o food. Go figure. My advice is to put glue traps in strategic "back alley" exits between furniture and the wall, as they have to go over the traps to get by. That's always how I've caught them.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I was about to say the same as Sam - th'hell is a roof rat?

You sure its not a possum or something?

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:34 (twenty-two years ago)

When I read "roof rat" I thought you were referring to a squirrel.

You might try asking the local humane society to see if you can borrow a "humane" trap (doesn't kill it, so you can release it outdoors).

― j.lu (j.lu), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

so you can release it outdoors

or brutally torture to death at your pleasure

― ken c, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 10:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I snuck up on one once and got it with a saucepan. For about a day afterwards I felt like Steve Irwin!

― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 11:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Keep it as a PET!

― Sarah (starry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

i live by a river and get lotsa rats.

i want to buy a gun of some sort -- would an air rifle be powerful enough?

― enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 11:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Intrigued by the idea of a roof dwelling rat, I have looked on google and found that a roof rat is a black rat, of which there is an estimated population of 750 breeding pairs in England. In contrast, the brown rat has a population of 5,240,000 in England. If you have a black rat, then you must be blessed.

― marianna, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 11:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Dude forget traps and poison and all that nonsense, just go to a hardware store and buy a few of those things you plug in which emit a noise unbearable to rats, and thus drive them away.

We caught a few rats in traps a few years ago before discovering this, never had a problem since. AND IT'S RELATIVELY HUMANE!

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

which emit a noise unbearable to rats

a david gray single recorded in rats frequency?

― ken c, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't do anything! Trust me, rats improve your street cred.

― Dancing Queen, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 12:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"There's a rat in me kitchen,
What am me gonna do?"

― Patrick Kinghorn, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I suspect there are rather more than 5 million rats in Britain. Half of them live on the tiny patch of Barnes common near my house. They're enormous and very sleek and clean.

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Rats hate the color pink and they hate lasanga. Your solution? Simple. Strip off the clothing, lie on the floor. Call the friemen to come and when they get there. have them rub cocnut lotion all over your person. the rat, now iresistably attracted to you, will shoot at high speed froma cannon, and try to burrow into your living flesh. jump inflame pit- rat dead

― Mike Hanle y (mike), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 13:42 (twenty-two years ago)

those 2.5 million rats are simon le bon groupies mark.

― ken c, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

And yet I still don't find Hanle y funny. (apart from "cocnut")

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

roof rat--most unexpected

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I first heard of roof-rats when I had a problem like this in another apartment (the one where I mashed the rodent with a box). My supervisor at work, who is eccentric to a point approaching madness, said, "It may be a roof-rat," which sounded pretty weird, but she knows a lot about animals, thanks partly to her gardening. (I think she is happiest in the garden. She seems to leave traces of it on her finger-nails at all times.)

I have glue-traps all around where I have seen it in the kitchen, as well as a couple in the bathroom where I suspect it has visited.

Ha ha, some of you people will use anything to further your pro-kitty agenda.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:25 (twenty-two years ago)

(The two times I caught a mouse in a bag, I set it free. The one time was completely unplanned. A mouse jumped into a bag of pretzels sitting on the sofa between my room-mate (at the time) and me. My room-mate looked at it and said, "I didn't know they were so cute," so he drove us to Fairmount Park (some distance from our apartment) and we set it free.)

Maybe I should write hysterical letters to the newspaper about my neighborhood's roof rat pandemic.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a rat in my apartment. Don't fuck with me.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i am waging ongoing war with mice in my apartment. some things i have learned:
1) those high-frequency noise emitters don't work.
2) glue traps mean that you either have to dispose of live, struggling squealing mouse or listen to it squeal, thrash, and die before disposing of it.
3) poison bait means bleeding mice crawling into your laundry bags to die and rot.
really, now - it's 2003. shouldn't anti-pest technology be past this point?

― lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I can handle the glue trap issues, but yes, there should be something better out there.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

chase it away with a broom.

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 21:55 (twenty-two years ago)

they have traps that a basically giant pinchers and you snap them open and put peanut butter inside. when it sticks its head inside and gets the peanut butter, its neck is broken and it instantly dies, convenient enough for you. but it gets more convenient as you just squeeze the trap open and then animal falls out into your trash. you killer.

― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:01 (twenty-two years ago)

OMG Dean those sound fantastic!

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Do they come in human baby size?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:02 (twenty-two years ago)

chase it away with a broom.

Only works if you chase it out the door, though.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Do they come in human baby size?

Mm, so tempting.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha! "I have successfully chased the rat from the kitchen into my underwear drawer. Hooray!"

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:03 (twenty-two years ago)

where you will intoduce it to the peanut-butter trap you have so clever hidden there

― Orbit (Orbit), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Not cute, once you find tiny pin-size holes in your thongs and bras

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:05 (twenty-two years ago)

says you.

― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

three months pass...

The roof-rat is back. It has pissed on the bathroom window-sill, part of its visiting ritual apparently.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Monday, 1 March 2004 05:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Wait, I was upset about my landlord saying ahead of time that my lease would not be renewed? It really doesn't matter since I was already planning on moving, and I might even move as early as possible now that the rat is back.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Monday, 1 March 2004 05:59 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.kuci.org/~brianm/ile/trevorrat.jpg

Does it look like this? Have you noticed an increase in drug trafficking and general riff-raff on your roof?

― donut bitch (donut), Monday, 1 March 2004 06:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't give me weird dreams. Last night (or this morning, I guess) I dreamt that Al Qaeda had bombed a margarine factory and it was releasing various toxic fumes. It wasn't entirely clear how dangerous the situation was or what the best thing to do would be. (Oddly it didn't really occur to me in the dream to turn on the radio or anything like that, to find out the news in more detail.) People were evacuating, but without any apparent certainty of where to go, so I just was kind of holed up, really, in this large but hole-like apartment. Maybe it is related the rat after all.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Monday, 1 March 2004 06:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not making that up, either. Somehow I found out it was a margarine factory that had been bombed.

― Rockist Scientist (rockistscientist), Monday, 1 March 2004 06:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you sure it wasn't a magnesium factory? Otherwise, I can't see how a nicely sauteed industrial park could be a danger to anyone outside the immediate area.

― donut bitch (donut), Monday, 1 March 2004 06:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to make humane rat traps for a local farmer, basically it was just a strong long cage with a trip ramp where the bait is that triggered the spring loaded door shut, a bar would come down on the door to prevent it from opening again.

It was more succesful using Mars bars as bait, although I did catch a couple on donuts.

what sort of traps have you tried?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 1 March 2004 11:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you sure it wasn't a magnesium factory? Otherwise, I can't see how a nicely sauteed industrial park could be a danger to anyone outside the immediate area.
-- donut bitch (do...), March 1st, 2004.

Dude, THE CHOLESTEROL!!!

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Monday, 1 March 2004 13:40 (twenty-two years ago)

twelve years pass...

Big fuck off cunt jumped out from behind the washing machine herself is a v measured person but the screams were b movie standard

― poor fiddy-less albion (darraghmac), Sunday, 18 September 2016 21:25 (nine years ago)

five months pass...

RIP to a respected but vanquished foe

― The Perks of Being a Wall St R (darraghmac), Tuesday, 21 February 2017 09:06 (nine years ago)

Not only can I recommend but the YouTube videos are highly satisfying

― The Perks of Being a Wall St R (darraghmac), Tuesday, 21 February 2017 09:12 (nine years ago)

We've had mice but our method is to chase them away and hope they don't come back

When we had a giant hole in the kitchen ceiling we twice found dead mice on the floor who'd almost certainly just fallen through. Do mice have accidents? Are they clumsy ever?

Anyway deems ur a brute etc *500 posts*

― imago, Tuesday, 21 February 2017 12:27 (nine years ago)

No rats, but mice. We went for an electronic trap when my cat just kept killing mouse after mouse. Really did the job well and zapped several more mice. I pitched it after coming home to an empty trap for several months.

It's been about a year, but over the weekend I came downstairs in the middle of the night to find the cat proudly standing over fresh prey.

― how's life, Tuesday, 21 February 2017 12:44 (nine years ago)

I remember a work colleague telling me about when he was a kid his pet mice project in the garden shed got out of hand and turned into a small colony. His dad in a fit of drunk anger conducted a very brutal mouse cull by putting them into old coal sacks in writhing, squeaking batches and liquidated them with a big lump hammer!

― calzino, Tuesday, 21 February 2017 12:51 (nine years ago)

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