I've a small invasion of rats and am terrified

I am not a lover of rodents, especially rats. They are dirty, disgusting creatures and they carry a whole raft of really nasty diseases. I was flamed on MN by a small minority for expressing these views but I still heartily dislike them. I know that they are very cunning and intelligent and some people love having them as pets. Not me. To see a rat in the toilet bowl is truly the stuff of nightmares and I think you were incredibly brave. It would have been enough to make many of us expire on the spot.

I've looked after pet rats for other people and the domesticated pets are supposedly very clean creatures but I still didn't like them. They stayed in their cages when they stayed here.

Would they not swim back down whence they came when confronted with the lid down and nowhere to go?

Not sure about rats not liking lavender. I blocked a rat run with a heavy pot. After a week or so I removed the pot and planted lavender, and the rat hole has now reappeared under the lavender plant! Peppermint perhaps?

Never mind peppermint and lavender - get the traps and poison
I’m a pacifist usually 🐀😏

Have the toilet cleaner ready to squirt on its head when you lift the lid.

Leave bleach in the pan?

henetha

I've had to stop feeding the birds because of a rat sighting. Such a darned nuisance. I'm planting lavender and mint around where I think they might be, hopefully a deterrent. And putting scented things in the toilets etc.
I hate rats.

They will stick to the perimeters of a garden. And don’t like light at night. Maybe a few solar powered lights would deter them. I’ve stopped feeding the birds, too. The squirrel just ate all the peanuts anyway.

I kept hearing a noise in the kitchen but thought it was the heating radiator. Then it happened when heating was off so checked all cupboards nothing. I even wondered if we were haunted as we live by a cemetery but dismissed that thought. My spaniel puppy kept knocking the bottom kick board off one of the cupboards too. One day OH reached for his bran flakes and something jumped out. His new packet was almost empty! He put a trap in the cupboard and killed it. Never found another in the house but saw one in the garden 6 months later. OH checked all the walls behind the cupboards, but no entry holes were found. I think it must have come in through the back door when it was open in summer. We keep it closed now. Checked the whole house but never found another or any sign of one here tg. Our local council does pest control for free, so if I see another, I will call them. Spoke to neighbours and apparently the last owners of this house had rats twice in the house. It's very common around here apparently.

Living on a farm I am surrounded by rats - they try to steal the chicken food and I put poison down in various sheds where no other animals can get at it and I have had them in the house. I don't mind rats as such - had pet ones as a child but not in my house or garden. I have trapped several in the cellar and shot at least four under the bird table with an air rifle, but a good terrier is the best. My Labradors are completely useless with rats!

Bohemian. I too have a deep seated fear of rats. We bought 'rat gates'. You find the manhole that feeds your soil pipe and install them. Easy to do or find a friendly plumber who should be able to do it. You can buy them on Amazon and they prevent anything coming up the pipes.

you have my sympathy i think i would have burnt the house down! eeww rats nasty. due to living by woods we have loads especially in shed and garden thank fully not in house.
i was helping my partner clear the shed once and one popped up out of a box, I was gone!

I’d be just the same, bohemian. My son had a rat problem and initially didn’t want to use poison. However the humane traps didn’t work so he called in the pest controller (£60) and this solved the problem almost immediately. How about pouring bleach down the loos and leaving it, and using lots of spray bleach on the floors/surfaces. Apparently rodents hate bleach…

ixion

Leave bleach in the pan?

Someone suggested washing up liquid but I wondered if that might froth up all over the floor when the loo was flushed!

Nanny27

*Bohemian*. I too have a deep seated fear of rats. We bought 'rat gates'. You find the manhole that feeds your soil pipe and install them. Easy to do or find a friendly plumber who should be able to do it. You can buy them on Amazon and they prevent anything coming up the pipes.

Oh! Never heard of them, what a great idea Nanny27

Just for those that say don't poison trap or kill them.
My friend's beautiful great dane dog died of leptospirosis. One of her neighbours was feeding the birds throwing birdseed on the garage roof. This attracts rats. On a hot day my friend put her dogs water in the garden while she was sunbathing and forgot to bring it in at night. Dog drunk from it next day but it was contaminated by rat urine.
Nothing the vet could do and the dog had to be put down. Very sad. It can affect people too.

Rats hate the smell of cigars which is very distinctive. I'm not sure you would want to sit around smoking one though. A friend of mine had an infestation in the thatched roof. The solution was smoke bombs. I'm not sure you can still buy them. I'm not very much help am I?

Rats won’t stay in the house with people. Gardens and outbuildings they like. If they come into your house they will soon leave (unlike mice - both house and field varieties who will stay). Pest control will use bait traps you won’t see any more rats after the first few baitings. I hate poison but it is done now and will definitely solve the issue and you won’t see any dead. Unfortunately rats can breed very fast and carry disease so sadly sometimes safe bait traps are the only way.

Allira

I've looked after pet rats for other people and the domesticated pets are supposedly very clean creatures but I still didn't like them. They stayed in their cages when they stayed here.

I think it’s the tail’s & teeth that have something to do with it 😂

I worry about rats, we have a sloping pipe running through the garage before it goes to the downstairs loo and then up to the bathroom. The slope is so shallow that I think a rat could easily walk up along the pipe. If we had rats I think I'd have to go away until they'd been dealt with.

One of our cats once brough a live rat into the house and it hid behind the radiator in our hallway, we could see its horrible pink tail hanging down over the skirting board. Fortunately my husband was in and he opened the front door and gave the rat a quick squirt of steam to send it on its way. Ugh...

Mt61

Allira

I've looked after pet rats for other people and the domesticated pets are supposedly very clean creatures but I still didn't like them. They stayed in their cages when they stayed here.

I think it’s the tail’s & teeth that have something to do with it 😂

We've had lots of hamsters over the years and they have teeth so it's probably tails with mice.

It's disease with rats.

We've just bought some liquid to spray around in the hope of keeping the rats away from the balcony area where we feed the birds (they climb up the wall, crafty little blighters!). It contains castor oil and peppermint and seems to be deterring them. You have to spray daily at first, then less often to keep them away.

How awful for you. We have a rat (probably more than one) in our shed, and it has been digging holes under it and around the garden which I keep filling in. The rat is a clever thing as we have a nice large trap which he can manage to spring and then eat the food. I want to use poison but will not as we have cats and foxes in the garden and I do not want them poisoned. So now I get all the bird feeders in at night although I cannot scrape all the leftovers up as I have watched him jump from one tree branch to another. They are very intelligent and I just wish they would go somewhere else as I am so reluctant to stop feeding the birds. Hopefully the foxes will catch him/them.

Rats caused £000’s of damage in our house. Chewed through an internal door, up through a wooden floor and through the wiring of our alarm system. They climbed shelves and broke a lovely ceramic bowl. It took two separate pest controllers to eradicate the problem. We have the plastic bait boxes now, and put the poison in when ever we see them. They got in by chewing out the concrete around drainage pipes and moved around the house inside walls etc.

Two winters ago they were running along our 1st floor balcony and window sills - we put a bait boxes on the balcony. Unfortunately the squirrels were also able to get into the boxes and there were skirmishes between the rats and squirrels over access to the boxes. (Although we have also had problems with squirrels getting into our roof - we had to get roofers in three times to block their access so I can’t pretend I was really sorry.)

We have always understood that they go back to their nests to die, so hopefully the risk to local pets/wildlife is minimal. But I don’t know what else we can do.