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Cactus Annie

Refugee
Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
2,146
Location
The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxar
On Friday night the gentlemen upstairs came down to tell us that the night before he had seen a rat on his stair case. He discribed as being a foot long with a tail about 4 inches long. He came in just after midnight after doing a night shift and when he put the light on he saw the rat run down the stairs and scurry in between the wooden plyths on his staircase that lead up to his flat. Separating his stairs from our flat is a wall and on our side we have a hallway as well as a safe that we've never been able to open and a storage cupboard that will be under his stairs. Because the building used to be all one house there's only a thin partition that's separating our flats at the bottom of his stair case, whereby a rat will easy be able to bite it's way though. However I think it's managed to get in the floorboards under the stairs and climbed up to his flat, under his floorboards. Sunday night I could hear something scurrying around upstairs for a few hours. This would be where his kitchen and bathroom would be. I heard it again last night and this morning I heard it whilst I was in bed, which would be where his sitting room is situated.

I went down to my local council office yesterday to see what they could advice and the lady said that they could send someone out, but they won't be able to do it right away. She said that it could've climbed through an air vent, through drainpipes and up through an open toilet seat. If we want to get rid of it ourselves then we've got two options: traps or poison. Barring in mind that if we use poison we'll be liable if a child consumes it and it will leave a smell. With a trap we have to get rid of the rat afterwards whilst it's inside the trap whilst with the poison it will just wonder off and die. I settled for the poison. I took it around to my nieghbour with a pair of old gloves and showed him it. He's Polish and although he speaks excellent English mum said that it's best to show him it and ask whether he has any friends that visit with children or dogs, he said no. He put the poison at the bottom of the stairs. I don't think he liked having to put it down, neither did we, but then we hate rats in the building.
 
a foot long?! :yikes:

you should read "the graveyard shift" in stephen king's "the night shift" book :lol:
 
:yikes: :yikes: :yikes: . . . poor little rat . .. but still a big fat :yikes: . . . hope you catch it and it doesn't suffer too much :)

(we had a rat in our last house . . . it met with a very unfortunate ending . . . unbeknownst to me it was hiding in the recess that the laundry door slid back into on opening . . . you can guess the rest . . . went away for a week . . . came home to the pongifying stench of dead rat . . . it made both me and my husband cry as we had to take door off hinges and perform houdini style extraction . . . :sick: . . . think we may have had a bath in pine-o-cleen that night :lol: )
 
I love animals and I know pet rats make wonderful companions, but I don't like wild rats. If it leaves out through the air vent we suspect that it may have got though, then that's great. But we have to get rid of it somehow. Mum said that it's the worst thing our neighbour could've said to her. She said she no lnoger feels safe in her own home anymore. She can hardly eat, she's been snappy, she flushes the toilet before she opens it in case it's in there and she asks me to turn on the light for her before she enters her bedroom.
 
I could still hear it in between the floor cupboards last night. I haven't told my mum that I know where it is, I'm trying to reassure her and keep her spirits up. Won't it die eventually if it's got no access to food or water? Or do rats also make up that small list of animals that will survive after a nuclear holocaust along with cockroaches, bacteria, the inbreed Dingle family on Emmerdale and the people who keep billing me Britania Music club even though I've never been a member and the company went into liquidation 4 years ago.

But it was funny what it said on the back of the rat poison. For amateur rat catchers only. We've had amateur singers, amateur tennis players and amateur footballers. Now we have people who take up rat catching as a hobby. Shall I know put this on my CV? My hobbies include reading, dancing, gardening, cooking and amateur rat catching. I don't see how that will do you much good for getting a job unless it was with Rentokil.
 
Yikes! After reading that I'm not feeling quite as bad about the fact I've got a teeny, tiny mouse in my apartment right now that isn't responding to the traps I've set for it.
 
Update: Yesterday the guy upstairs said that on Monday night the poison had gone, so the rat must have had it. When he put some down on Wednesday night that also had gone, so we must have had at least 2. I haven't heard anything since Wednesday night so hopefully that's the last we'll see of the little critters. A few weeks ago there were doing road works along are road which was closed for quite a few weeks. I don't know what they were doing exactly but someone mentioned to me that if they were doing stuff in the water pipes then the rats could've been disturbed and this made them disperse into our flat.
 
we had rats in my flat when we first moved in... it was unnerving! i kept imagining them running around my room whjile i was sleeping :ohmy:


anoter traumatic story involving rats... a friend and co-worker of mine had a mouse trapped in a mouse trap, but unfortunatly the trap didn't kill it. so the poor little guy was mangled in such a way that he was still alive, but his body was crushed.... we discussed the possibilities of what we should do and everyone just wanted to throw the little guy outside and let him die on his own. slowly and painfully. i thought that would be inhumane and the little guy deserved a swift and painless death. so we took him outside and i killed him with a log.

i killed a mouse. i went home and bawled about it :(. but i think i did the right thing, and the more humane thing.
 
Oh my, I remember the last time I had a rat. I was trying to do the right thing to recycle and was saving aluminum cans on my back porch. while sitting outside one afternoon I saw a long "tail" go by.
I knew it was a rat. Where there is one there can be many more. I set a trap and caught it the next day. I put it in a bag outside to dispose of it and when I went out the next morning, I saw a very large cat dragging it, bag and all, across the drive way. I ran after it but it took off across the fence with said rat and bag.
No more problem. It was kind of the food chain thing. I let the cat carry on. :up:
 
If there were cats and/or dogs around, there would not be rats. I wonder how many anti-pet landlords realize this. I hate hearing about poisoning them, because if a dog or cat find their body and eat it, they'll die too:( Rats, unlike mice, are usually too smart to fall for traps.
 
Okay, so I guess this is the perfect place to ask: How do you get rid of beavers? I'm not joking either (I've posted this questions elsewhere, I get the obvious jokes of course:doh:). This beaver keeps coming under my porch and making holes. We keep trying to cover up the holes with anything from dirt to rocks and wood but the creeper keeps managing to get in again. We called animal services but they told us that they don't take care of it because it's wildlife. I have seriously no idea how to get rid of it. Any ideas?:hmm:
 
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