rats...

I've never seen a rat on the street in this neighborhood. There are a fair amount of feral cats so that may help.

May not be true for the apartment dwellers, though...

We don't have any rats in our apartment , but we do hear them scratching the walls trying to make a way in. As soon as we hear them , my husband grabs an object and starts banging really hard right on the spot that it is standing behind. It gets scared and backs off for a while. Probably moves on to another apartment.

If they do ever get in , then its on! Premeditated murder. I hate rats , hate hate hate hate, rats!

We had one and tried the glue traps and snap traps but nothing worked. I bought this thing called a rat zapper after seeing it recommended on brownstoner.com and bought one. It's the best thing. We killed three rodents(not sure if they were rats or mice) and have not had any problems since. I swear it works. We bought the low-end version and it works just fine.

best?

*meow*

Subject: Re: rats!

We live in a limestone (2 family) right on the border between Crown Heights and Bed Stuy. I feed the birds and have a garden, and at first the rats would come from the neighbor's (weed and trash strewn) yards into mine for the dropped birdseed. They started coming after my neighbor did some construction, so I’m not sure where their previous home base was, but they came to my yard where they could be seen at dusk, if we went out and surprised them. They chewed a hole in my plastic composter and were living there for a while, but then they decided to make themselves even more comfortable, and they came inside. Uninvited.

I actually LIKE rats, in theory. But they started chewing holes in the paper bags of birdseed, which made a mess. They got into my pantry and nibbled on my sunflower seeds and chocolate. So I put the birdseed into big metal trash cans, and I put all of the food in my apartment into containers. I also put my trash into a covered can, because they were rooting around in my open can.

We found cracks between the door to the basement and the door jam, out back, and figured that was how they got in. We filled the cracks with a foam insulation that puffs up and then hardens after it's squirted out of a can. Because your building is so large and you don’t have control of it, you may not be able to do this, but your super should try to seal it up, and you should try to seal up your apartment.

So I put away my food and sealed the entryway. Also, they probably won’t come INSIDE your apartment because of the smell of your cat. I would think. A little mouse got into the downstairs apartment and was caught by one of the cats, who laid the stunned mouse on the floor in front of me. At first I thought it was a toy, but then it moved... So I got up to take the mouse outside and the cat grabbed it and had me chase her all around the apartment. Finally I caught her and she let the mouse go and I put it outside.

But that was a little mouse - the big rats inside our house didn't bother the downstairs apartment (where four cats live) but had the run of my upstairs apartment. They would come out at night and chew on my house plants while I was trying to sleep. I'd hear scratching and munching noises, but not in the walls - in the room. Then one dark night I awoke to find someone gently nibbling on my neck… I swatted my neck and heard a soft squeak. A RAT HAD CLIMBED ON MY BED AND WAS BITING MY NECK!!!

I didn’t want to kill the rats (it’s just the way I am) so we got a live trap and started a trap-release program. I’d bait the trap with a bit of apple with peanut butter on it rolled in birdseed, and around 2am or 3am I’d hear the SNAP! of the trap’s door and some awful squealing and squeaking. In the morning I’d let the poor little captive go free outside and re-set the trap for the following evening. Out back a cat started showing up; I call her my black-ops contractor. I don’t do the killing myself, but what she does outside the borders of my home is implicitly approved of. I didn’t sleep well for several weeks, but at last we caught the last rat and all was quiet. I sealed up the holes in my baseboards with steel wool. Some people suggest peppermint oil to keep the little rodents away, so we poured some onto the steel wool. I keep all of my food put away. That was almost a year ago and I think we’ve won this battle… For now.

I hope you win yours.


Here's a picture of one of the little guys. Cute, huh?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8813767@N02/540780411/

Violet , that was a very nice story and I am hoping it wasn't true.

naif wrote: Thanks--lost of good advice. The feline strategy hasn't really worked, unfortunately. I guess ours isn't hungry enough these days to pay much attention to them, although she used to be quite the mouser. It might be time to trade her in for the rat zapper! Also like the story about the birds in the walls--wish we were so lucky. In the beginning, it was some consolation to think that the sounds in the walls were being made by squirrels. But the rodent we saw didn't have a furry tail...

The frustrating thing is that that the super claims that now that they're in the walls of the building, there's not much that can be done. Even if we were to get rid of the current population, he says, they'd still invade from less well-kept buildings on the block. Is he just being defeatist? Is the key really just learning to live with the scratching and squeeking and ensuring that they don't get into the apartment (or making sure they're poisoned/zapped/trapped/clawed if they do)?

if you have a cat, they may crawl around in your walls, but they won't come into your apartment...like violet said, the smell of the cat freaks them out...in fact, somewhere recently I saw a rat 'repellent' that supposedly mimics some of the properties of cat urine...not that cat urine smell is that big a real step up from rats...