In my garden they climb acheap metal arch, down a thin piece of wire to get
to a hanging birdfeeder, i do see them during day, have now found they have
a hidey hole under my Phormium, have used a £3 rattrap this last 3 weeks
baited with cheese, this has been triggered twice with bait gone and no
catch, have had 6 rats in those weeks, one trap has gone missing, so if
anyone in the west midlands sees a rat with a trap attached to it, the trap
is mine..
The usual advice is to stop feeding the birds removing the larder of the
rats, however, the birds sit and sing waiting for me to fill the feeders and
are not so shy now.
I feed the magpies with toast crusts, they drop some on the floor for the
pigeons and blackbirds, and hard bits they dunk in the birdbath to soften
them. as far as I know this feeder is 6 foot tall and is alleged to be
rodent proof.
You will control the rat population but never rid of them. It is said that
no matter where you go , you are never more than 20 foot from a rat.
Some areas of the country are getting infested with a new breed of rat,
almost impervious to most modern baits.
Sorry about length of post. 3 glasses of wine and I write a book.
regards


"John L" wrote in message
...
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.

Cheers
John

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.