Rat under the floor?

[Edwards]

We have some builder in laying a concrete pad and then doing retaining walls for our back garden. I get on well with my neighbors but not that well that I want their house in my garden.
Anyway while digging up around the one grid they spotted a hole next to it. This has now been covered over with 6 inches of steel reinforced concrete and we have a scrabbling noise coming from under the suspended wooden floor in the living room.

Does anybody know of a good poison or trap that I can put below there to kill the thing. Or should I just let nature take it's course, if so how long will it take.

I do need to get under there soon to move a plug socket and as the gap is only nine inches, I do not want to be sharing the space with a hungry creature.

[reohn2]

Big, mouse like, rat trap:- http://www.stoprat.co.uk/rat_traps.asp with raw bacon in it

[Edwards]

with raw bacon in it

I would cook and eat the bacon as I am on a green diet as in eat green things. Boring fruit and veg.

Thanks I now know where to get a trap. What do you do with the contents?

[thirdcrank]

.... What do you do with the contents?

With a trap like that which is supposed to kill the rat you bin it and if you are a bit squeamish, bin the trap as well.

Your problems arise if you go for a 'humane' trap which does not kill the catch because it must then be destroyed humanely. (It's illegal to release vermin into the wild somewhere else.) It seems that the only approved humane ways to do a DIY destruction are either by shooting by getting it into the corner of a sack and crushing its bonce with a single blow. Otherwise it's call a vet, because they do say that transporting then isn't humane. Drowning is definitely taboo.

(I only know this because I was being visited by a squirrel or squirrels last year and I did a bit of googling. The RSCPCA is reported to have had somebody banged up all day by the police when he claimed to have drowned a squirrel. Mine must have been a mind reader because it lost interest in my nuts. Perhaps somebody else got it. )

[cycleruk]

with raw bacon in it

I would cook and eat the bacon as I am on a green diet as in eat green things. Boring fruit and veg.

Thanks I now know where to get a trap. What do you do with the contents?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvCjKh1h29Y

[Edwards]

I am certainly not squeamish but try to avoid the dreaded RSPCA.

Cycleuk as I am this strange diet do you fancy coming around for a barbecue delight?

[Cunobelin]

The thing you need to be careful of is the delightful aroma of decaying rodent

Whilst the carcase will eventually dry out and cease its malodorous manifestation this can take several weeks.

Catching and disposing will save you this wonderful experience.



Or you could take this as an opportunity to dispose of unwanted family members / neighbours and bury them under the floorboards and blame the smell on the rat!

[Jonty]

We had a rat which was quite brazen and ran past our side door. We contacted the Council rat catcher. He arrived with a little terrier which looked as if butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. The rat appeared in the back garden and the man "threw" the dog out the side door. It was running before it hit the ground. After the rat hid and tried to escape by running up a trellis the dog got it. Murder and mayhem. The dog was shaking the rat and the rat was squealling its head off. My wife almost had a fainting fit but I thought it was great. A big old male rat, we were told, who had been kicked out of the local rat retirement home. The ratcatcher told us that that was the 265th rat the dog had killed that year.
Then in a previous house we had mice. Again we got the Council pest control officer out. Much to our embarressment he told us "this is the first time I've been called out to this road".
jonty

[thirdcrank]

....Or you could take this as an opportunity to dispose of unwanted family members / neighbours and bury them under the floorboards and blame the smell on the rat!

I presume you have never seen what it's like when that happens? As a young detective I did, long after the body had been removed, when the scene was still being preserved while the defence decided what they wanted to do. When the killers contined to live there, the hose must have been full of blue bottles because the kitchen cupboards contained nothing but insecticide. The floor cavity was ao heavily covered with deal bluebottles, including those clinging to the sides, it looked like seaweed on a harbour wall.

[alicej]

Yeah dead rats really, really stink. I'm terrified of them and would recommend moving house.

[Edwards]

The thing you need to be careful of is the delightful aroma of decaying rodent

Whilst the carcase will eventually dry out and cease its malodorous manifestation this can take several weeks.

That was what I wanted to avoid. Which is why I queried poison.

I have been told my mothers ashes "ARE NOT GOING UNDER THE CONSERVATORY".

The only family member I want to get rid of is to fat to fit in the gap. In fact he is that lardy they would need an industrial sized furnace to get him in.

[ferrit worrier]

And just to throw somthing else into the equation, Weils disease or Leptospirosis

http://www.leptospirosis.org/

infection can come from the rats urine.

[random37]

One of these:-



My dad's dog, Poppy, is only a part-time lap dog. She would make short work of a rat. My big, scary looking dog, on the other hand, would try to make friends with it. I find it's very often the same with people.

[rualexander]

I remember staying at a cheap 'crash pad' type accommodation in Singapore where the guy that ran the place trapped rats out in the yard. To kill them he boiled the kettle and went out and poured it over the rats!

[Cunobelin]

....Or you could take this as an opportunity to dispose of unwanted family members / neighbours and bury them under the floorboards and blame the smell on the rat!

I presume you have never seen what it's like when that happens? As a young detective I did, long after the body had been removed, when the scene was still being preserved while the defence decided what they wanted to do. When the killers contined to live there, the hose must have been full of blue bottles because the kitchen cupboards contained nothing but insecticide. The floor cavity was ao heavily covered with deal bluebottles, including those clinging to the sides, it looked like seaweed on a harbour wall.

Never had those problems with the first wife.