Large Rat Found

I had to bait a rat in the roof a few weeks ago, hate killing creatures but didn't want the wiring chewed. Gonna invest in a good size cage trap for next time.

There's only 2 more possible spots there using to climb up, along the fence onto the carport or the Camellia.
 
The only picture I can find of this alleged monster rat is of an object in a plastic bag.

Does a more informative image exist?
 
Wacky Adventurer said:
I had to bait a rat in the roof a few weeks ago, hate killing creatures but didn't want the wiring chewed. Gonna invest in a good size cage trap for next time.

There's only 2 more possible spots there using to climb up, along the fence onto the carport or the Camellia.
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Years ago my neighbour had some living under his garden shed and he put poision down.I saw one struggle across our lawn but it died before it reached the flower border. I don't agree with killing any problematic creature like that.
 
Bit spectical about this...overfed rats would be morbidly obese, that looks quite lean, clean and healthy looking (even if dead). Adult male rats would be about 20 cm from nose to tip of tail
 
JohnC6 said:
Years ago my neighbour had some living under his garden shed and he put poision down.I saw one struggle across our lawn but it died before it reached the flower border. I don't agree with killing any problematic creature like that.
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I go with the advice of our erstwhile colleague Cobra who was formerly a professional in this field: catch and release, only kill if you really must and then only using a proper guaranteed poison that gives a quick death.
 
We have a female rat who lives in/under our compost bin, which is near my bird hide / feeder setup, (I only feed there 5 months of the year, the rest of the year the feeding station is in the front garden) this area is behind our cat fenced back garden and backs on to a small copse and fields beyond. She does produce babies but if they are stupid enough to venture into the main back garden, um, they don't last long, 7 cats, 5 of which are Maine Coons don't miss a trick when it comes to rodents.
 
lindsay said:
I go with the advice of our erstwhile colleague Cobra who was formerly a professional in this field: catch and release, only kill if you really must and then only using a proper guaranteed poison that gives a quick death.
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Yes. I recall Cobra relating his experience in these matters and wondered what he would have had to say re this incident. There was a pest control chap on the radio ..LBC,I think, yesterday morning and he said he rarely,if ever, uses poison. When he's called to a house he looks for the problem. Often a hole in a pipe and seals it and that sorts it out.
 
welshwizard645 said:
Bit spectical about this...overfed rats would be morbidly obese, that looks quite lean, clean and healthy looking (even if dead). Adult male rats would be about 20 cm from nose to tip of tail
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The council are launching a full vermin inquiry in council properties. . I don't think it's a hoax .Other people have said they've seen huge rats.
 
welshwizard645 said:
Bit spectical about this...overfed rats would be morbidly obese, that looks quite lean, clean and healthy looking (even if dead). Adult male rats would be about 20 cm from nose to tip of tail
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A body without tail is 20cm. They are getting massive.
I’ve got photos somewhere of a couple I shot in the garden at our old house, one is laid out across a 2ftx2ft slab and nose to tail is almost as long as the slab. Another next to my size 10 shoe and the body is the size of my shoe. I photographed them because I couldn’t believe their size. We had a large cattle farm as a neighbour which obviously didn’t help.

Best poison is lead to the skull. Immediate death and no suffering from poison. Anyone thinks it’s cruel, get them chewing in your roof and you’ll change your mind.
 
bumper said:
A body without tail is 20cm. They are getting massive.
I’ve got photos somewhere of a couple I shot in the garden at our old house, one is laid out across a 2ftx2ft slab and nose to tail is almost as long as the slab. Another next to my size 10 shoe and the body is the size of my shoe. I photographed them because I couldn’t believe their size. We had a large cattle farm as a neighbour which obviously didn’t help.

Best poison is lead to the skull. Immediate death and no suffering from poison. Anyone thinks it’s cruel, get them chewing in your roof and you’ll change your mind.
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I agree. I prefer to leave wildlife alone, but rats have a nasty habit of breeding at an alarming rate. We get them on our farm of course, we don't have any kids there so we have a couple of old, low-value air rifles left at useful places, we've used shotguns sometimes but not only do they have to be kept locked away and also cost money for cartridges, they also have the potential to cause damage, and once the new and ridiculous steel shot regulations come into force they will be far too dangerous to use. Air rifles do the job and any reasonable shot can kill very humanely.

Years ago though, at another site, we were completely overun with rats and there were far too many to shoot, although we tried very hard. We ended up having to poison them, back then we could buy poison that actually worked, but I hated causing the suffering.
 
A neighbour reported a rat at the boundary of our garden. My wife spotted it near our pond. The next day she spotted a large feral cat in our garden and we have not seen the rat since or the cat.

Dave
 
Garry Edwards said:
I agree. I prefer to leave wildlife alone, but rats have a nasty habit of breeding at an alarming rate. We get them on our farm of course, we don't have any kids there so we have a couple of old, low-value air rifles left at useful places, we've used shotguns sometimes but not only do they have to be kept locked away and also cost money for cartridges, they also have the potential to cause damage, and once the new and ridiculous steel shot regulations come into force they will be far too dangerous to use. Air rifles do the job and any reasonable shot can kill very humanely.

Years ago though, at another site, we were completely overun with rats and there were far too many to shoot, although we tried very hard. We ended up having to poison them, back then we could buy poison that actually worked, but I hated causing the suffering.
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Poison is fine for places like outbuildings and industrial properties. I wouldn’t fancy poisoning a big rat and letting it rot in a house though.

I try to kill nothing in our house or garden but I will kill a rat without hesitation. They chewed the roof in our old house and we had to have it repaired. Luckily the insurance paid(don’t ask!). I literally carry beetles etc., outside, my wife is serial crusher lol!

Even a £100 air rifle ( not pistol) with a cheap sight zeroed in will dispatch a rat in a reasonable sized garden. If a farm ever gets overrun, there’s plenty of responsible shooters that will help you clear it for free.
 
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bumper said:
Even a £100 air rifle ( not pistol) with a cheap sight zeroed in will dispatch a rat in a reasonable sized garden. If a farm ever gets overrun, there’s plenty of responsible shooters that will help you clear it for free.
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I paid a lot for our old springer rifles, from memory one was £20 and the other was a tenner:) iron sights are much quicker than scopes and they also stay put. Grey squirrels cause even worse damage, we once had one living in our loft, but one day it made a fatal mistake and jumped from the eaves to a nearby tree, while I was carrying a shotgun.
 
My local duck pond has some absolute monsters of rats, one slipped into the water and I thought it was an otter on first glance.
Too many feeding bread and the likes, place should be called the rat pond.
They've definitely got bigger since I shot them on the pig farms 20-30 years ago, with my Theoben rapid 7.
 
Garry Edwards said:
I paid a lot for our old springer rifles, from memory one was £20 and the other was a tenner:) iron sights are much quicker than scopes and they also stay put. Grey squirrels cause even worse damage, we once had one living in our loft, but one day it made a fatal mistake and jumped from the eaves to a nearby tree, while I was carrying a shotgun.
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Can’t beat springers much better than air-pfffft:ROFLMAO:I wouldn’t trust most to use iron sights, most I’ve seen don’t even have a back stop and just fire all round the place, popping off all over the neighbours buildings.

And don’t start me on grey squirrels, they’ve cost me a fortune in bird feeders. They’ve recently gnawed at my new heavy duty metal feeders. Hope they broke their teeth:ROFLMAO:
 
You need one of those inverted domes placed half-way up the pole on the bird feeder to keep squirrels and rats off. We bought one a couple of years back and despite already having 'squirrel proof' feeders, we only go through about 1/3 the amount of feed now.

 
ancient_mariner said:
You need one of those inverted domes placed half-way up the pole on the bird feeder to keep squirrels and rats off. We bought one a couple of years back and despite already having 'squirrel proof' feeders, we only go through about 1/3 the amount of feed now.

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My feeders are hung off fancy bracket type things mounted to a 5"x5" wooden post, not a pole unfortunately. Plus they jump from the trees onto the feeders. The feeders have got screw type lids and they’ve figured out how to undo them. I drilled a hole to drop a small metal bar (tent peg) into the lid to act as a bolt but they figured out that it needed pulling out before turning. I’ve now had to use metal tie straps to stop them undoing the lids.

As much as I hate them, I do admire the swines.
 
lindsay said:
I go with the advice of our erstwhile colleague Cobra who was formerly a professional in this field: catch and release, only kill if you really must and then only using a proper guaranteed poison that gives a quick death.
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I was under the impression that releasing rats without the land owner's permission is an offence. Same with grey squirrels.

I was in the pest control business in France until recently. The number of people who were recycling pests they had caught in live catch traps was laughable. One woman was at it for months before taking advice. Spring traps accounted for 7 wood mice in a few days then nothing for months. It was the same with rats and dormice. One chap used to take dormice 11 kilometres and they were back within a few days. He marked them with paint to confirm it. By then he had taken the same dormice on trips out in the countryside for months.

My view is that the large rats, the Norway or Ship Rat need killing, but not with the sort of traps you would buy at supermarkets or garden centres. Fenn traps or bodygrip traps in the suitable size and housed in a box to avoid accidental non-target species captures. Don't use poison especially indoors. The smell of decaying rodents isn't pleasant and they usually succumb in inaccessible places. Also the poison accumulates in raptors and other predators such as owls.

Rats will be attracted to free food from bird tables or chicken coops and around October will come in from the hedgerows and from under sheds and look for a warmer place to spend winter. I have two trap boxes set 24/7/365. I attach a piece of tie-wrap to the trap and this goes out through a hole in the side of the box so that I can see at a glance whether the trap has gone off. Use dog treats as bait and replace them every month.
 
Clive K said:
I was under the impression that releasing rats without the land owner's permission is an offence. Same with grey squirrels.
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Yes. We were once overrun with squirrels, son and his border wallie reduced their numbers dramatically, they would walk around, very few of the squirrels that she started on the ground made it to a tree trunk and those that did met with an once of lead.

After a while, the numbers were so reduced that it wasn't worth the time, so he set up a live trap, he visited it twice a day, shot the squirrel in it and re-set the trap. It all went well until his mother found the trap, she convinced herself that it was cruel to trap them and then shoot them and started loading the trap on to her pickup, driving it a couple of miles and then releasing the squirrel. She just wouldn't accept that this was not only illegal, but that it was cruel to put a trapped animal on a vehicle and drive it away, and that they would come back anyway. She knew she was right, she always does.

Son was upset. I suggested that he borrow another live trap from another farmer and put it where his mother couldn't find it, which worked well.

Eventually she told me that she had been proved right, the trap hadn't caught any for months. I just agreed with her:)
 
Garry Edwards said:
Yes. We were once overrun with squirrels, son and his border wallie reduced their numbers dramatically, they would walk around, very few of the squirrels that she started on the ground made it to a tree trunk and those that did met with an ounce of lead.

After a while, the numbers were so reduced that it wasn't worth the time, so he set up a live trap, he visited it twice a day, shot the squirrel in it and re-set the trap. It all went well until his mother found the trap, she convinced herself that it was cruel to trap them and then shoot them and started loading the trap on to her pickup, driving it a couple of miles and then releasing the squirrel. She just wouldn't accept that this was not only illegal, but that it was cruel to put a trapped animal on a vehicle and drive it away, and that they would come back anyway. She knew she was right, she always does.

Son was upset. I suggested that he borrow another live trap from another farmer and put it where his mother couldn't find it, which worked well.

Eventually she told me that she had been proved right, the trap hadn't caught any for months. I just agreed with her:)
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One of the biggest problems of pest control is when one party wants them dead and the other wants non-lethal methods. One of an all female couple was conviced for years that I was re-homing their moles in a sactuary :D

She then asked me to trap and kill the rats that had devastated her plastic containers containing chicken food.
 
From 9.00pm LBC Radio is having a phone-in about this rat. It seems that the situation deteriorated after the Redcar council withdrew pest control services.. I assume that meant free services. People will have to pay for it now.
 
JohnC6 said:
From 9.00pm LBC Radio is having a phone-in about this rat. It seems that the situation deteriorated after the Redcar council withdrew pest control services.. I assume that meant free services. People will have to pay for it now.
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And yet the council have a legal duty to ensure vermin that could create a health hazard are dealt with.
 
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