I've a small invasion of rats and am terrified

Ahh it’s so hard to kill them just for being on your turf why nota humane trap and het it go into the wild

I had a problem with rats, and it was dealt with very speedily and completely effectively by a professional firm - they informed me that many people put down small amounts of rat poison, which makes the rat get an upset tummy, but not be killed .... and, wait for it ... they told me that due to rats being such intelligent creatures, they go back to the nest and communicate to all the other rats that there's bad food and where it is, so the other rats avoid it and you're stuck with them. They said to ALWAYS put down a really large dishful of poison, which will kill the rat so fast that it doesn't have the strengh or time to "tell" the other rats.

Also, obviously, if you have pets or children you absolutely must place the poison inside a receptacle which is heavy enough and comletely enclosed, that kids and cats or dogs can't get to the poison.

Hellogirl you’re not stupid I like them too highly intelligent animals I just prefer the in their own setting not my house 🤣

I quite like mice and rats but do NOT want to share my house with them, apparently next door did🤣 and when they were put out the house for letting it go to rack and ruin the owner found the place heaving in vermin he had to almost gut it and of course that disturbed the little loves and a couple found their way through to mine
I literally managed to keep it to one rat and one mouse by covering every crack and hole in my old house unfortunately I accidently killed them both without meaning to

I thought I identified a small hole behind the sink where a pipe had been in the kitchen and guessed the rat (my first visitor) had come in through that so I sealed the hole up but what I didn’t realise was I d sealed the rat in under the sink not out as I thought …a few weeks later smelling a smell I open the under the sink door and there was a very very large rat dead as a dodo ,poor thing
Then the mouse I was sitting in my living room and it shot across the room …after a few minutes shooting around the room it went to dash out the door away from me I leaned over to bang the door shut as I wanted to contain it in the one room, unfortunately for the little thing the door crashed on its head killing it outright, no blood or anything just bang gone I really felt bad I had expected to catch it and set it free
They ve been gone a couple of years nearly and never had another mouse or rat since thank goodness

I used to live near a river, so had lots of rats. One day one ran over my slipper as I was pegging out. I threw a bucket over it & ran to the butchers to get the son to come & shoot it.
My cat would kick box them all around the back garden.
I would positively die if one had of got one in the house.

I’m sure living near a canal Hellogirl you’ll know that water rats - actually water voles - are rare and endangered. It’s easy to tell the difference.

cats

A rat chewed through the pipes at the back of the dishwasher and flooded out the kitchen and the hall .
I could hear rats scratching at night .
They kept me awake.
I found one in my handbag eating from little ketchup containers. My vitamin c tablets had also been enjoyed !
I had to throw a lot of food away .Now items such as sugar and flour are kept in plastic boxes .
I tried to trap them and failed.
I was very nervous of sitting on the loo I'd flush it and use a lot of bleach .
I called in a professional rat catcher and he got rid of them .
My neighbours four cats are a nuisance in the garden,but since she adopted them we haven't had another invasion.

Bohemian, I’m feeling queasy just reading what happened to you. I’m absolutely hopeless with rats. I stopped feeding the birds because I saw a fat brown rat waddling around the bird table. The council rat man was great £40, it’s free now but the wai is 3 months not a week.
Don’t worry about the poison your pest control people use. I have a spaniel and a lab, both can sniff out anything edible. The pest control guy used boxes with bait the rat had to crawl into the box to eat.

I’d be like you- weighting the toilet lid down but - those nightly trips most older women have to make 🙈🙏🏽

My house is on the banks of a canal, so water rats are a regular sight. I don`t mind them, as long as they`re outside, but definitely wouldn`t like them in the house. We had several mouse invasions, but only during periods when we didn`t have a cat. I know it sounds stupid, but I don`t really mind mice, find them quite cute. Saw a rat in a pet shop window once, I wanted to buy it, but hubby said a very firm NO!

I live on a small development, a bit rural, but most of the other residents are ‘townies’. Having kennels, everyone assumed DH knew all about animals (he did) and explained the difference between the cock pheasant and the peacock a neighbour thought she had in her garden! Someone’s escaped ferret was a source of amusement too.
Anyway, a game keeper friend gave DH proper rat boxes (4) and I keep them primed and around the outer walls of the house all year round. The construction means only rats can access the poison, (nibbling it) which then can’t be carried away. Often, rats are itinerant, moving from one area to another.

Inside the house is another matter and for professionals.

Boheminan this is very much an ad hoc, homemade thing to try and has worked with mouse infestations but it's cheap and very doable if you can tolerate the smell of bleach for a short while.
Every year my daughter had a nightmare keeping the rodents at bay and tried traps & poison - no pets & within the house so no danger to wildlife - but it was so disgusting to deal with it on a daily basis and took so long to really eradicate them, this year I thought drastic action was the only way and literally soaked all possible access points with thick, domestic bleach. To be fair, the most likely places were accessible by pulling back the kickboards in the kitchen and liberally squeezing the bleach bottle around the plumbing sites. (In your case, I'd be inclined to put bleach in the loo after every flush too.) It only needs to be done for a short while until activity/sightings stop & I don't know if it was good luck or good judgment but not seen a trace of the minging little critters this year.

What a dreadful experience. Hopefully, this was just a stray rat. I hope the vermin hunters found where they were getting in. Have you, or your neighbours, had any work done which involved knocking through walls etc as this can open a pathway for them? Perhaps block off entry to the kitchen under the appliance you saw them disappear through. Good luck.

I've always had a fear of seeing a rat in the downstairs loo if we've had particularly heavy rain and localised flooding and keep the lid down. But one could still be there.

As we all feed birds round here, we've seen one or two over the years in the gardens. Once I found a desiccated one on the lawn (we hadn't poisoned it, a neighbour must have done). They like to nest in compost heaps where it's warm.

I wouldn't use a humane trap for a rat, what would you do with it if caught? Yes, you do need someone professional to deal with this problem, well done, and your neighbours should be aware too.

Oh crikey boheminan how truly awful for you, really hope the Pest Controllers get this sorted for you...

(rushes off to close toilet lids)

Find someone who has two rat-catching cats, or a cat and dog team that go ratting, or a terrier of one of the renowned rat-catching breeds and invite the animals, with or without their owners to stay.

Make sure, naturally, that there is no rat poison out!

Poor you that’s awful. There was a Mumsnet thread about someone’s daughter who had seen a “ black snake” in the toilet. She had drawn a picture and everyone said it would have been a rat’s tail she had seen.

Sadly they seem to be everywhere now. We got rats in the garden probably due to me feeding the birds. Had to stop feeding birds which was heartbreaking. The rats seem to cut through our garden and our dogs will indicate where they have been.

Fortunately none in the house but recently at least one got in the garage and ate part of an Easter egg! We moved any food sources from there and I cut peppermint oil capsules and squeezed the oil under the garage door. It smelled really strong. Ants don’t like that either.
Not seen any for days now. Hope you get it all sorted soon.

Yes, SueDonim, I've started flushing the loo before using it and also squeezing washing up liquid down. It's amazing how resilient these creatures are. I read raw garlic and onion will deter them, so left some around on the kitchen floor. They must have thought all their Christmases had come at once, they just ate the lot.

They hate the smell of peppermint don’t they? Maybe put peppermint oil in the loo? They hate light, too, so maybe leave a bright light on in the loo? I have to admit, though, that I think an experience like that would leave me scared to go to the toilet. Could you put cling film over the toilet so you know that, if you left the lid and there’s one there it can’t get out (obviously having, in the middle of the night, to remember that you’ve done so).

I think most people would freak out at such a horrible situation, Bohemianan, you poor thing.

I don’t really know of the effectiveness of this but would flushing the loo before you lift the lid be worth doing?

We live near fields so rats come and go .
I wouldn’t want to find one in a toilet that is for sure !
There is a lot of guidance online how to discourage rats . Please don’t put poison down as other animals can eat it or the rat takes the poison and someone’s pet gets it or a hawk . It’s a big no no .

I too have a rat phobia.

A building where I once worked in London had a restaurant underneath, in a basement, next to my office window was a set of outside stairs leading to their kitchen, with half barrels on every other step, filled with beautiful flowering plants.

One day I noticed something out of the corner of my eye and when I looked it was a baby rat popping up from the earth in one of the pots. We had three generations of rats running around outside my windows. It was horrific!

I rang environmental health, who found a loose sewer cap where rats where running backwards and forwards.

It was over 30 years ago, and I still am filled with horror!

I had this too recently and blamed myself for putting out too much bird seed on the ground during cold weather.
My rat catcher had a great little dog who sniffed out where the nests were ; the man explained you don't find dead rats because they have gone back to their nests to die.

winterwhite they don't go back down the pipe, they jump out of the toilet bowl...

I read that to prevent rats climbing up through the toilet you should squirt a little dish soap in the toilet bowl and they will then slither back down when the toilet is flushed. Some people recommend putting something like a brick on top of the closed seat so that they cannot push the lid up.