"John L" wrote ..
I've just seen a rat come over our garden shed roof, down the gutter, up
the stick that holds the bird feeder, and then start feeding itself. It
did it 3 times in 20 minutes. It looked huge (but then: they always do
I believe). It was definitely a brown rat - pink paws and all that.

So: tomorrow I buy a couple of rat traps, and tell the neighbours; on
Tuesday I'll tell the council (FWIW).

We live in a rural village right next to fields/woods (hm - sounds
great don't it?). However our houses are standard 60s semis (i.e. not
converted barns on the site of an old farmhouse). We've been here 25
years, and I don't ever remember seeing a rat before in such flagrant
proximity.

So: any comments from people here who have suffered from rats? I feel
we need to eradicate them ASAP.

p.s. To save comments: in those 25 years we've always had compost heaps
(with no food scraps) and we've always had bird feeders.

We have seen them here a few times and this is a built up area. However, we
are quite close to a railway line (Waterloo /Reading) and the Thames is only
a couple of hundred yards away.
Our Council does not have a "Rat Catcher" any more you have to...
1. employ Rentokil or similar yourself at £120+
2. do the job yourself
3. live with it.
Unfortunately we tried living with one for a while hoping that it would go
away as others have but it turned into a family that got so brazen they
started to swim out on our pond to eat the fish pellets as I threw them in.
Rentokil came, set baited traps and told us where they were and what we
needed to do to make life difficult for the pests (Remove 30ft of large
leaved Ivy and the fence it was over**, make sure there were no hiding
places, keep everything spotlessly tidy). None of the traps ever showed
signs of being used but the rats were never seen again.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden
W.of London. UK

** the fence was in front of a wall so there was a gap between the two for
the rats comfort.