Rusty Hinge wrote in
:

someone wrote:
"John L" wrote in message

nvalid...
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.

Do you believe everything you read on the internet?

That statement - 'you're never more than ten feet away from a rat' is
utter twaddle.

I'm saying that as someone who used to earn his living in pest
control.

Anything you put on a website (****ter, farceboo, even newsitems) will
show up if you feed the right words into a search engine.


Wake up ratcatcher
"I'm saying that as someone who used to earn his living in pest
control."
If you were that (pest control) someone who used to earn a living then
you are either a liar or very very naive, or even stupid and maybe that
is why you changed vocations.
Try a scientific approach and yes, use the internet, but not
wikipedia....etc.etc.
Ask your local council for their quarterly or anual report on the subject
and buy a calculator to work it out. That is if you can switch it on!

This will help if you can work the calculator:-
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndC...tAndWeedContro
l/DG_10026663