Rats! (Eratication)

 

For the last couple years I have been dealing with any appalling rat bastard situation up in the chicken coop.  What began as some not quite innocent rodent mischief turned into an all out battle for supremacy lasting way too long.  And costing hundreds of dollars.  And enormous loss of vermin life.

I suppose I have been extremely fortunate up until this onslaught began.  Both the hen house and feed storage area(s) have a concrete foundation.  The structure is pretty darned sound.  You can read about that construction project right here: FantasiaLand.  So it's not like I just had bags of feed laying out in the yard inviting the multitudes of nature.

I have had a single rat to deal with two different times over a seven to eight year period.  I ended up ferreting the first one out and bonking him on the head with a shovel.  

How about that, I ferreted a rat!

The second time I made my ex-son-in-law stomp on him.  It was perfect.  He's a scientist and city dweller and happened to be on the wrong side of the fence when the battle erupted.  I was anticipating the kill and had the shovel, but the rat zigged when he was sposed to zag, and well, fresh city shoes made the hesitant stomp that day.  

For six or seven years I just left the feed in the bags on the concrete floor.  Nice.  Simple.  Easy. Then this onslaught began.  

I do want to caution, if you are an animal rights or rat advocate or somewhat squeamish, I caution you  continuing with this post.  It's gonna get right rat nasty.  

By the way, these aren't the kind of rats you want in a cage inside your house.  They aren't the sort you name Ralph and let run around all over little Jimmy's arms and legs.

 "Ohhhh, how adorable."

Nope. These are the bubonic plague sort of rat nasties, the kind you would drop into your pet Anaconda's cage and watch as it's swallowed whole, squealing all the way.

In case you need a few more reasons why you don't want junior playing with these particulars: Seven Rat Facts

It started in winter the normal type way.  A hole appeared in the bottom of a feed bag and I noticed some rice-sized rat poop here and there.  I went on alert, every morning I was up there I'd make an effort to find the rascal.  I had the two times before, why should this time be different?

The hole got bigger, the droppings increased, but I never saw the culprit.  Then one day I moved the meal worm box and a freaking family of five or six scattered.  I bonked one, but the battle had begun.

I had two different kinds of rat poison on hand, they ignored those.  I ultra soaked the feed shack in mint, if the wind was right it smelled like grasshopper pie a mile away.  They stayed.  I tried one of those ultra sound doohickeys, that didn't work either.  I tried one of those electric zappers, baited it with peanut butter.  Got one, that's it.

Early on in the campaign I took away their main feed source.  I bought two new thirty-two gallon plastic garbage cans to house the feed.  But those little delinquents started in immediately, gnawing on the lids, tearing holes all over.  I started covering the gnawed parts with foil.  It was back and forth and a ludicrous hassle.  Finally, after a couple weeks of pure, unadulterated, ridiculous frustration, I switched to metal cans.  And that worked. 

I am now the owner of two nice, new, red, lidless and purposeless garbage cans.  I tried to save twenty bucks and ended up spending forty more.  If you have a rat problem do yourself a favor and start with metal.  You'll end up there anyway.  Those miscreant rodents are relentless.

I really had no idea what I was up against.  I didn't know they multiplied like Mormons.  I had found and killed maybe five or six of them over a couple months, thinking that had to be close to it, but boy howdy, things picked up quick after a physical therapy session.

While I was having my left hamstring worked over, I was lamenting my rapidly becoming out of control situation.  Even though their main feed source was gone, there was still evidence of them everywhere.  It was like the wrecking crew gang from "A Clockwork Orange" came out every night and did their "Singing in the Rain" routine. 

And then my physical therapist suggested using glue traps.  Not the ones for teeny little mice, but the real McCoy, these big guys, 5x10er's.  Baby.

I baited them in each back corner behind the feed cans, and boy howdy, did they work.  But then the severity of my situation really began to add up.  Every morning I would have at least one, sometimes three, in each trap.  From two to six per day.  It was like Rat Christmas every day!

The confirmed kills started to add up.  Twenty. Sixty.  Eighty.

And these glue traps, they're awesomely gruesome.  The cartoon picture above is cute, the real picture is nasty.  I won't go completely Dean Koontz on you but blood, guts and squealing often greeted me every morning.

I also didn't spend a lot of time trying to be humane.  I never invited them over.  I never asked them to be my friend.  I'm pretty sure the chickens didn't either.

I also didn't have time to deal with the little bastards once they were caught, living or dead.  The whole trap with rats got picked up with a shovel and tossed into a brown grocery bag.  If they were living they didn't last long, especially in the heat.  

Yeah, I was merciless by this point.  Besides the extra daily work, the war was getting expensive.  Each glue trap costs about $2.00.  That's close to  $4.00 a day.  For months. 

And boy howdy, smell?  Those dead little bastards smell awful.  Not as bad as seared human flesh, but pretty darn bad. 

 How do I know what seared human flesh smells like?

No, I wasn't around for the Donner Party.  And don't get me going about those idiots.  I actually have a draft going regarding my opinion about that fiasco...we'll see if it makes it to print.

You'd actually have to find one of my old firefighting posts.  I'm sure I mentioned it.  Our engine was first on the scene for a small plane crash one time and all three aboard the plane had perished upon impact.  And then burned beyond recognition after the subsequent explosion and fire.  

I was involved with extrication of the remains.  It was pretty gnarly.  And quite sweet meat pungent.  Those folks ate some sugar!

But I digress.  There was also confirmed evidence those smelly little maleficents had made a Hopi village of caves within the cliff the chickens had created over time.

That entire concrete block (with brick on top) supporting that middle post used to be underground.  The chickens have scratched and clawed, hunted and pecked so that the inside of their coop is now level and not sloped.  That action has created about a ten foot long cliff, from one to two feet high.  Within that cliff were rat caves, all over the place.

Being the ex-firefighting pyromaniac that I am, I started playing with these smoke bombs and others like them:

Sometimes a disorientated rat would make it out past the smoke, wherein I would bonk him with a shovel.  Sometimes they would scurry out a top hole to another, giving away one of their secret locations.  

I uncovered a nest one time in the upper echelons of the labyrinth and massacred a family of eight squealing rat babies.  I bonked a few but then let a couple squeal until their close-eyed little fur less rat bodies froze in the cold winter air.  I was hoping their cries for help would summon their parents, wherein I would shatter their skulls with a shovel.  But no, they had apparently fled to save their own vile vermin souls.

Besides, a female rat will produce up to five litters per year under the right rat circumstances. The litter sizes are usually between three and twenty, with an average litter size of seven.  It takes only thirty-five days for a rat to reach sexual maturity from birth.   

Do you think the parents even cared?  They're rat baby making machines.  That's apparently all they do.  That and raid my chicken house every night. 

One time I went ahead and threw little packs of poison into all the caves, shoving them in a few inches and then I concreted up the openings, thinking they couldn't get out and would eventually get hungry enough to eat the poison.  I ended up with about a half dozen rats that made it up to the surface (somehow) to die.  So a few took the bait.  

But the war raged unabated.  Every time I thought I made some head way and maybe subdued their morale, they responded like a school full of kindergartners unleashed at Disneyland.  New rat holes would appear around and under the concreted ones.  And rice sized evidence everywhere every night.

I'd keep bombing, I had to keep up the effort.  Each of those packs range from $6.00-$12.00 depending on the brand (and duration of burn time), and I'd burn a pack every week or so.  That was adding up too.  

There had to be an underground labyrinth that would have made the Viet Cong envious.  I rarely if ever got a surface bound escapee.  And then very so often I'd find a spent smoke bomb carcass that was magically tossed out of the cave in which it was deployed the day before. 

I began to think they were Cheech and Chong acolytes and the smoke bombs were spliffs.

"Heyyyy, thanks Mon," they'd rat mutter, "We've got the munchies now."  

And then go raid my chicken coop. 

Rat poop everywhere, including in the chicken's feed container, which hangs about a foot off the ground.  Did they create a rat ladder up or scurry five feet down a metal cable?  I dunno.  

Either way was an acroratic feat.

After a while, the glue traps started to lose their luster.  The rats were talking to each other.  

"Hey, Marvin.  Stay away from that sticky stuff.  Chloe stepped on that the other night and got stuck.  Never came home.  No bother, I'm sleeping with her cousin now."

Somehow the bait was being taken, but it would take a few days just to catch one.  The catches would either be a youngster that skipped school that day or a fatter one that just couldn't resist the bait.  But the leaders of the pack and the rest of the round table were stayed away.

I took to watching U-tube rat catching videos at night before going to sleep.  No doubt enhancing my rodent killing skills in my dreams.  

I tried a number of their ideas.  None of them worked.  Or maybe worked once. Rats everywhere else seemed really gullible.  Why did I get the ones that went to school?

The glue traps seemed to be the only thing that worked, only now less so.  I also kept smoke bombing the holes with limited success.  The evidence of their infestation kept up its pace.

Tractor Supply was the only local purveyor of smoke bombs, only they ran out.  The bombs even became in short supply at Amazon.  Apparently I wasn't the only one with a rat problem.  That or there's a lot of pyromaniacs out there playing with smoke bombs.

I was beginning to feel rat impotent.  I wasn't putting up any sort of offense.  Or defense.  I was growing  concerned.  I didn't want the infestation to continue unabated.  I had to keep up the effort.  

For a couple weeks I kept after Tractor Supply for smoke bombs, they said they should be restocked any day.  But that day never seemed to come.  So one day I decided I'd try a box of these:

  

The blocks are about 4x6 and peanut flavored.  I broke one apart, put a couple smaller pieces around the feed house and then put a smaller block (about 2x4) up in the companion cage, close to the upper echelons of the rat cave Hopi village.  The chickens are currently locked out of that area, so it was a perfect set-up.

The next morning I discovered the smaller pieces in the feed house had been nibbled on.  Then I noticed  the 2x4 block in the companion cage was GONE.  Devoured.  

I was surprised.  I had not seen any sort of poison consumption on that level at all since the war began.   I put an entire 4x6 block in the companion cage.

The next morning I found two to three dead rats on the ground.  I also found the entire 4x6 block had been devoured!  Poof.  Gone!

Holy cow.  Those little bastards were having a heck of a serious feast on the wrong cuisine.  Lucky me.

I put another 4x6er in the same place.  The next morning, the same thing.  Two to three dead rats on the surface, the entire block of poison devoured.  I was guardedly optimistic.  Had I found the holy grail?

Then we went to Costa Rica, and left the fallout to our ace pet and house sitter, Amber of  Pet Plant and Homes. 

Amber picked up a total of eight dead rats on the surface during the week we were gone.  We bagged all the surface dead ones and threw them in the garbage by the way.  I didn't want the potential of any wildlife (or our cats) to ingest a poisoned rat.

In all, maybe twenty to thirty of those vile creatures made it to the surface to die with the last offensive.  I think another several hundred died in their underground bunkers.  Something devoured almost the entire box of poison and it wasn't just thirty rats.

It's been four weeks now and there has been zero evidence of any those nasty scoundrels.  I baited another glue trap two weeks ago, but the bait and trap still sit idle.

I have had several people tell me I'd never get rid of them.  And these were informed people, not the  the UPS guy.  This was a pest control guy and several ranchers.

How many rats did I ultimately kill in this two year battle?  One hundred eight-two confirmed.  But I'm pretty certain a minimum of that number died underground from the poison.  Too much was consumed to only kill thirty.  

I would like to say I have done my part to not create more vermin for the world.  Your welcome

When that teeming ratopolis emerged around my poultry habitat, it was important for me to not let it get out of hand.  Hell, if it got too crowded up there they could have started migrating to the house.

Hopefully with the changes I have made to their potential food sources I can avoid any future infestation.  But if they do come, I am substantially wiser for the next go round of rat eratacation.

"Pura Vida, Resort'n Done Right" coming soon.