"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.


We've lived on the edge of a small town in Wilts for over 30 years. There
are lots of old houses and cottages, with crumbling drains and so on, and
everybody round about has always had rats. We have a big compost heap into
which we put our kitchen stuff. The real problem is not our compost heap,
it's people on the nearby main street eating takeaways and tossing their
chips and stuff away.

So yes, we've seen a lot of rats in our time. But we have always had two
cats that take care of the problem.

A bigger problem is on our allotment a quarter mile away: we have to plant
either early or late sweetcorn, to fool the rats. If we plant ordinary
sweetcorn they have the lot.

I was standing in the bus station in Swindon a while back, there is a very
small hedge, about 6' long x 2' wide x 4' high nearby. Little rats were
playing among the roots.

You're never more than ten feet away from a rat, wherever you are. Google
it and see.

Gotta learn to live with them, or, as you say, kill them.

someone