If you look at the CSX ABBA head-on shot I posted in WPF, you see a tunnel in the distance. A momma kangaroo rat has taken up residence. Now a kangaroo rat looks like a mouse (think Mouse Hunt) but with a slightly larger body and longer tail. Normally, I would just have another beer and wait for mother nature to take her course.
Since Thursday, I go out in the morning and suck all the nesting debris out of the tunnel with a shop vac thinking as the birthing approached she would seek another venue. But nooooo.
Now the line has been crossed. She started dragging my spline cars up and to the tunnel entrance as camouflage. Strike 1.
Mind you, the cars were sitting on hidden staging tracks on a lower level. So I put the splines away till this saga resolves itself. She got to the hidden staging by chewing through the Styrofoam tunnel wall to a lower tunnel!. Strike 2.
Last night she sealed her fate when she tried to drag an F89 flat car up to the tunnel. But it was obviously too long and too heavy for her little mouse jaws and front legs so it fell to the ground. No damage aside from rat spit but that specific point is moot. Strike 3.
She has also created another room if you will, by chewing into the main tunnel side wall so I can’t just reach in with tongs and snag her furry little butt. Actually, this facet of the desecration doesn’t bother me.
So far she has evaded traps so I have already moved on to better living through chemicals. Or dying if you are the rat. But that takes several days for the chemicals to do there job. The last thing I want is for this tunnel to become a rodent materity ward.
Any suggestions? If I could hook a hose to the Jeep exhaust, I would just seal the tunnel and let the carbon monoxide do its job. But that’s a 60 foot run from the garage.
Lesson learned? Build a plywood liner for the tunnels and put the foa
Grab a pellet rifle and get some beers and sit in a spot with a clear shot/view of the tunnel. If the rodent shows itself dispatch it. This is why I like to keep my 1000 fps scoped gamo handy. Good luck.
They cost north of $60 at Ace. I hate rats but not quite that much. If she isn’t dead by tomorrow, I will day light the mountain, add the plywood liner, and rebuild.
I think that the problem will continue to re-appear (with fresh rats of course) until you find out where they’re getting in and get it sealed. As for the chemical solutions, they work but not with all animals, as not all will be attracted to any particular bait. Also, the idea that the little corpses dissolve quickly seems to be a myth. The smell will linger for months.
Thanks to a neighbor slaughtering a pig and cow for meat and throwing the unwanted pieces-parts in a bon fire (much of it didn’t burn,) I ended up with a good sized rat in my tool shed. Traps, trays of poison, anything I put out she would drag away and hide. After putting half a dozen pellets into her, it only got her mad. She would stand on her hind legs like a boxer, daring me as I put yet another round into her. Finally had to get her attention by whacking her with a garden spade and breaking her neck with the edge of the shovel. I’d say, once she drops the babies, she might get really nasty. Later on, I found hollow point pellets made for varmint control. Wish I had them at the time of the battle,
Don’t suppose you can swing a shovel in that tunnel?[swg]
I made the mistake of using poison a few years ago on squirrels in the attic. Poison worked but one crawled into a wall and died. Talk about smell. After that we still had problems so I bought a gammo pellet gun and shot them outside when they left to seek food and water. Over the course of the winter I bagged 16, and never had a problem again. I’m sure all 16 weren’t up there but there’s guilt by association.[:-^]
Not quite… we had a mouse in the house over the winter. He liked to “flip us off” by leaving his…uh…“deposits” on the edges of the glue traps. Other traps he’d relocate or otherwise get the bait…and leave a “calling card” to show us who the superior life from was!
I would’ve poisoned him (better living through chemicals as the OP said…), but figured my beloved dog would finally lift a paw to go after the critter, and get poisoned as well.
I think the mouse and dog had an agreement…
Chris[8]
As a semi-related comment, I heard where a hospital was using the glue traps, since they were “humane.” The rest-of-the-story is that when a mouse was found attached to one…instead of taking him/her/it out to the country and pouring a little cooking oil (or whatever it is that is supposedly supposed to un-glue the varmint), the maintenance guys would fling it (trap and mouse) into the incinerator… [:-,][:O]
I noticed a rat eating uncaringly on my lawn about one month ago, with eagles flying overhead. She ran under the neighbour’s wood shed once, and another time scampered up the deck stairs, up our vinyl siding and up over the roof. Life must have been good.
I told the neighbour about the wood shed, and I knew he has a rat trap…the snap kind. He baited it with a piece of orange…freshly pealed, citrony, saliva inducing…oohhh, ssooooo compelling…and snap that trap did. Humans 1, Rat no score.
We manage to get mice during the winter. WE have two cats who help. SOmetimes. Other times they just play cat and mouse with them. And we set the traps with peanut butter that “lock the mouse inside”
I’m surprised we haven;t started to see the ants yet, as we live beside a large wooded area and get them every sping.
I would line hte tunnel with that rat trap sticky tape and see what happens.
I have found shot (tiny pellets like from a miniature shot-gun shell) from a .22 revolver (or rifle) fired from a distance from 3 to 6 feet to be effective and relatively safe, at least for a firearm. Bullets “fired” from pellet/air guns would probably penetrate deeper, increasing safety concerns.
Living in the country, I’ve become an export at killing mice and rats. Set a green rodent bait block against a wall. Angle a glue trap with peanut butter on one side and a Victor rodent trap that has the peddle that looks like a peice of cheese on the other. It’s a three prong attach.
The rodent will want to eat the bate, but will have to walk through the glue trap or cross the snap trap peddle first. Only the snap traps with the “cheese” peddle work. They have a scent cast into them.
I had a bat the other night. Not int he train room, the door is closed to keep the cats out, but in the rest of the house. I finally caught it (n help from said cats) and took it outside.
Glue traps are NOT humane, mice and rats will do anything to try an free themselves, and without getting graphic it can be pretty bad. The peanut butter and oatmeal works well because it sticks to the trap trigger - not like a piece of cheese or something that could be plucked off without jostling the trigger. Used to get voles on the garage, digging in a bag of peat moss. Used to catch them and take them to the field across the street. Depending on the animal being trapped, I usually just release them away from my house, not kill them for no reason. Certainly wasn’t goign to kill teh bat, they eat skeeters and other nasty annoying insects.
They are still developing the empty lots around my house so I’ve been battling field mice for about a year now.
The peanut butter on the mouse trap trigger doesn’t work. They just eat it off of there without releasing it. Poison didn’t work either.
What I finally came up with, and has worked like a charm, is using the glue traps. Put the 4 that come in the pack corner to corner to form a hollow center square. Put dog food or cat food in the center of the traps and wait. This has never failed me once. The only time this “didn’t work” was when one of the mice seemed to have ran away with the trap never to be seen again. (this was about 2 months ago) Come to find out this past weekend when cleaning out the side of the garage the layout will be in the trap did indeed catch him and he wedged himself in a good place. Everyone kept telling me I’d smell him before I found him, but alas he never smelled and there was no sign of decomp either. A dry basement that is (now) sealed from bugs/rodents kept the decomp and smell away.
I caught two more mice in the garage the other night within an hour of each other using the dog food surrounded by glue traps. There isn’t another way I’m gonna try or waste my time and money on anymore.
