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Rats! Rats! Rats!

It's kinda preferable to trap them alive rather than kill them, if you can. Just release them in a wood or forest somewhere. No doubt they will end up as a snack for an owl or fox, but at least you won't have bad karma.

Hmm... How do you know they aren't reborn as a rat because they were a terrible person, in which case killing them might be a good thing? Or, within Buddhism, it could be argued that killing a rat places them back into a rebirth situation where you may have done them a favor if they have been a virtuous rat. It may be that killing a hundred thousand rats in a lifetime will grant you a rebirth as a ruling monarch at a time of war. The teaching is that violence begets violent karma after all. I hope you enjoyed my use of Buddhist casuistry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry
 
When I was a kid about 60 years back my farther came home one night and
said he had been walking home and had he passed a doorway a copper dragged him
in told him "the rats are moving" next thing the st is full of rat's wall to wall all
heading the same way like a river, once they had gone he carried on home and
did not see another rat, he did say that he thought he would have been in some
danger if the cop had not pulled him into the doorway, I have never seen anything
like that but don't doubt he saw what he said but have never heard of it since,
though the cop acting as he did makes me think he had seen it before.

Many years ago my late father told me a similar story about my uncle, a policeman, who was patrolling near the River Irwell in Salford. Pretty much the same story word for word but it was a colleague who pulled him to one side.
 
It's kinda preferable to trap them alive rather than kill them, if you can.
Just release them in a wood or forest somewhere. No doubt they will end up as a snack for an owl or fox, but at least you won't have bad karma.
Certain things need killing IMO (at least when they are around people). Rats and mice are amongst them as are scorpions (they are responsible for millions of deaths annually). Let the predators have at them including us.
 
I saw a rat boil once when driving home at about 2am. All of a sudden the gutter simply erupted with rats who went racing down the hill I was driving on. I hear it isn't so uncommon in NYC.
 
One of the cats caught a huge rat and left it outside the back door the other day. Never seen one round here before.

It was a big bugger, an impressive feat for either old man Dex or tiny Neela....
 
I saw a rat boil once when driving home at about 2am. All of a sudden the gutter simply erupted with rats who went racing down the hill I was driving on. I hear it isn't so uncommon in NYC.
Maybe caused by a sewer flood or explosion, or too much gas?
 
There is one scuttling about in the cavity wall not far from where I am sitting typing this.

I am back into my rat reduction campaign. But this little sod seems to have missed his/her blue cornflake breakfasts so far.

They get in due to the workers who re-clad the house making a very bad job of sealing the bottom of the cavity walls when they added insulation.
I've blocked of as many ways in as I can find, but suspect that there is a rout in from next door.

INT21.
 
Maybe caused by a sewer flood or explosion, or too much gas?

You are more than likely correct. My guess is that a nearby factory may have vented loads of boiling water rapidly, as there was a fair bit of steam present.
 
There is one scuttling about in the cavity wall not far from where I am sitting typing this.

I am back into my rat reduction campaign. But this little sod seems to have missed his/her blue cornflake breakfasts so far.

They get in due to the workers who re-clad the house making a very bad job of sealing the bottom of the cavity walls when they added insulation.
I've blocked of as many ways in as I can find, but suspect that there is a rout in from next door.

INT21.

Are you sure it's a rat? More likely to be a mouse.. Maybe you've seen it though.
 
Hunck,

It's a rat. We had a big rat problem in the area a couple of year back. And I keep seeing the odd one running down the edge of the house. Also they can be seen attempting to get at the food on the bird table. I have a rat cone on the table to prevent them, but they are very clever and will sometimes find a way to get around it; usually via a fruit tree branch.
They also will climb the plum tree and take plums from it.
There are no mice to be seen.
The poison keeps the numbers down, but new ones appear. It's a never ending battle.

INT21.
 
Do they put rat in ratatouille?

A Vancouver restaurant has unequivocally denied claims it served a diner clam chowder with a dead rat in it.

Last Thursday, Instagram user pisun_ne_ne shared a video of the alleged incident, showing what appears to be a rodent being pulled from a dish served by Crab Park Chowdery. The post is the first to be shared by the account in more than a year and while its caption includes a link to the user’s “active page”, many have cast doubt on its authenticity. HuffPost reached out to both accounts for comment however neither responded by the time of publication.

“Today my friend ordered Manhattan clam chowder and had a little surprise in it ― A RAT,” the caption reads. “It’s an awful feeling, it’s not a fly or a bug it’s a fucking big rat boiling in the soup pot, which means my friend was not the only [sic] who had a chance to try it ... My active page is @adelaiiine if you think this one is fake.”

In the video, an unidentified individual can be heard asking if the rat “is supposed to be in here.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...cid=newsltushpmgnews__TheMorningEmail__010219
 
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Maybe they should parachute bird and reptile friendly cats/JRTs in as an alternative.

I GET THE feeling you don’t dislike rats enough. Because your struggles with the rodents chewing through your house pale in comparison to the problems wrought by rodents chewing through entire island ecosystems. Release just one pregnant rat on an island and soon enough the invasive predators will have decimated that pristine environment like an atom bomb. Sure, rats on their own are pretty neat, but we've got a nasty habit of transporting them where they don't belong, at which point they transform into menaces.

Such is the plight of the Galapagos Island of Seymour Norte, a speck of 455 acres off the coast of Ecuador. In 2007, conservationists succeeded in ridding the island of invasive rats, but a decade later, the fiends had returned, likely by swimming from the neighboring island of Baltra.

Realizing the impending doom of Seymour Norte’s endemic species—rats eat both the eggs and hatchlings of birds, as well as reptiles like iguanas—conservationists again declared war, this time unleashing a new weapon: drones. Flying autonomously along predetermined routes, the drones have been dropping rodenticide bombs with extreme precision, down to half a meter accuracy. On Seymour Norte, officials and conservationists are once again banishing the rats, but the war against invasive species for the purity of the world’s islands has only just begun.

https://www.wired.com/story/drones-... NL 012619 (1)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl
 
It's not a case of not disliking them. It is that I do not like the idea of poisoning anything with a poison that works in the way they do. If they took a mouthful then dropped dead, no problem (Cyanide ?) But killing something by creating massive internal bleeding isn't a comfortable thought.

I may go down to the police and see if I can get a license for a 410 shotgun.

I could then pick them off from the bedroom window. Safely shooting down into the garden and no risk of the shot going outside my property.

Worth a try.

INT21.
 
I may go down to the police and see if I can get a license for a 410 shotgun.

I could then pick them off from the bedroom window. Safely shooting down into the garden and no risk of the shot going outside my property.

Worth a try.

Air rifle would do, no need to involve the police. A catapult would work also, if you want to go 'medieval' on them.
 
There is always that option.

Ideally I'd like to glue a tracker on one and find out where they are coming from.
 
I can't see the garden from the back of the room. Need to be looking down from this room I'm in.
 
Afraid not.

They are active in our 'bird garden' which is close to the house.
 
Well, the rats went very quiet. and the food was not being touched. Until yesterday when the patter of tiny feet was heard again.

So, up into the loft again tonight. laid out some more 'treats' for them.

I was stood on the ladder in the open loft hatch, light was on, when a medium sized member of the ratus ratus family came skipping along one of the ceiling beams. It was about eight feet away and I was in full view. It reached the end, turned around and trotted back the way it had come.

Cheeky blighter.

I hope it enjoys it's 'last' supper.

I can hear it above me as I type.

INT21.
 
To expand things a bit, apparently in Florida you are never very far from a python.

Anyone live down there ?

I suppose that at least they keep the rats down.

INT21.
 
Well, the rats went very quiet. and the food was not being touched. Until yesterday when the patter of tiny feet was heard again.

So, up into the loft again tonight. laid out some more 'treats' for them.

I was stood on the ladder in the open loft hatch, light was on, when a medium sized member of the ratus ratus family came skipping along one of the ceiling beams. It was about eight feet away and I was in full view. It reached the end, turned around and trotted back the way it had come.

Cheeky blighter.

I hope it enjoys it's 'last' supper.

I can hear it above me as I type.

INT21.
You have Black Rats? Lucky you.
 
Sorry, Ratus norvegicus, not Ratus ratus.

A glitch in my Latin.
 
Buy your 'Free the Rat' T shirt from me. only £5 plus postage.

Anyone wanting a free rat just send £3 for post and package.
 
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