Rats

[girlx]

last time i posted i had an unwelcome resident in my house- a tookay. he seems to have left and has been replaced by a large rat. the rat steals and leaves half eaten food all over my kitchen, runs around my bedroom at night (leaving me with fears that he will crawl on me in my sleep), and drives my dogs absolutely nuts. advice on how to get rid of him without killing him? i don't want him moving his whole family in and attracting snakes and the like. thanks!

[Misplaced]

A few cute cats will do nicely. You just have to be vigilant about picking up the kitty's poo poo

[chownah]

In the States they have a trap called a Have-a-Heart Trap. It is a small cage with a one way door. Don't know if you can get them in Thailand. I've seen similar home made devices here but don't know how effective they are. If you do get one of these live capture devices then you have to decide who you are going to dump them onto....I've already got alot of them eating my sweet corn so you could drop them by my place and I'll poison them like I do the others. I've just started on them and in the last two nights I've put out one packet of poison grain (5 baht per packet) each night. I pick one of the partly eaten ears of corn, open it up (remove about 1/4 of the husk), lay it on the ground, and make a little pile of the poison grain on top of it. Both nights the poison was gone in the morning. Tonight is my third night. I don't like doing it....I like to think that I do not kill things needlessly. If I do nothing I will have no vegetables. If I live trap them and release them then I'm just shifting their murder to someone else....what to do.... I guess I can not say that I grow my vegies completely organically now...oh well...I'll tell people I'm organic except for this and quite frankly Thai people will understand and won't bat an eye.

For in house rodents we use rat glue and when we find one stuck to it we crush its skull so it dies quickly and doesn't suffer needlessly. You don't want to use poison on house rodents because they might crawl away to some hidden nook to die and then they stink sometimes and attract bugs.

I just thought of something....hire another tookay to do the dirty deed for you.

Good luck on solving this dilemma.

Chownah

[Boon Mee]

I'm pretty much Buddhist in my general attitudes but have no reservations about taking out a rat with extreme prejudice. They do spread disease(s)

[girlx]

For in house rodents we use rat glue and when we find one stuck to it we crush its skull so it dies quickly and doesn't suffer needlessly

oh-yikes. i don't know if i could crush a rat's skull- how do you do it? i don't think i could live with myself. once in NY though i used a glue trap to catch a small rat. i thought i could just peel him off the glue and let him go elsewhere- not the case, you would peel his skin off of him since the glue is so strong. i didn't know what to do so i just threw the trap out in the street (with the rat screaming)... had nightmares all night long about the suffering the poor thing was going through. found the dead body a day or two later. i find things like this to be totally traumatic.

does anyone know if one of those trap door rat cages can be found in thailand? what about the spring-loaded mousetraps like they have in the US?

[Noel]

In the States they have a trap called a Have-a-Heart Trap. It is a small cage with a one way door. Don't know if you can get them in Thailand.

Thai hardware-type stores should have them.

I had the need to get one some years back and caught the not so little chap the very first night, thanks to a small piece of meat as bait.

Being the humane sort that I am, I released the unharmed 'Roland' in a neighbour's garden; I never had liked that bastard since the time he turned my water off and later tried to get my maid to give him a massage...

[tutsiwarrior]

In the States they have a trap called a Have-a-Heart Trap. It is a small cage with a one way door. Don't know if you can get them in Thailand. I've seen similar home made devices here but don't know how effective they are. If you do get one of these live capture devices then you have to decide who you are going to dump them onto....I've already got alot of them eating my sweet corn so you could drop them by my place and I'll poison them like I do the others. I've just started on them and in the last two nights I've put out one packet of poison grain (5 baht per packet) each night. I pick one of the partly eaten ears of corn, open it up (remove about 1/4 of the husk), lay it on the ground, and make a little pile of the poison grain on top of it. Both nights the poison was gone in the morning. Tonight is my third night. I don't like doing it....I like to think that I do not kill things needlessly. If I do nothing I will have no vegetables. If I live trap them and release them then I'm just shifting their murder to someone else....what to do.... I guess I can not say that I grow my vegies completely organically now...oh well...I'll tell people I'm organic except for this and quite frankly Thai people will understand and won't bat an eye.

For in house rodents we use rat glue and when we find one stuck to it we crush its skull so it dies quickly and doesn't suffer needlessly. You don't want to use poison on house rodents because they might crawl away to some hidden nook to die and then they stink sometimes and attract bugs.

I just thought of something....hire another tookay to do the dirty deed for you.

Good luck on solving this dilemma.

Chownah

never seen a tookay as big as a rat...the downtown BKK variety rodent is usually as big as a cat...heavy ordnance is required...special weapons and tactics deployed with extreme prejudice are required when confronted with mortal danger, gnashing incisors, and etc...

an associate used to keep a CO2 pellet gun for this purpose to protect his family in Jakarta...he lived in a walled compound that the aggressors had easily breached...

girlx...I have the same nighttime apprehension regarding scurrying vermin inside the house...if I see a spider in the house that hasn't been squarshed I feel that there is always the possibility of an intrusion of the bed linen...

[kerryk]

I was living in Vietnam a when a rat chewed off most of the toe of a sleeping (passed out) friend of mine. I guess that was my first exposure to bad rats. I am sure there are good ones. He was really passed out as a result of a mix of chemicals and alcohol. I think we could have performed major surgery and he would have not wakened.

My next experience was with Ben. I managed a restaurant with three other ex army buddies and we had a rat that the wait staff had named Ben (there was a movie at the time).

Ben was tolerated until one night he made an appearance during business hours.

We did what any three ex army guys would do. Got a case of beer and three automatic rifles (22’s) and set up an ambush for Ben.

We got Ben with the same proficiency as we had dispatched many other enemies of the state but the damage to the restaurant cost us about 2 grand.

My last experience was by far the most challenging.

Restaurants are plagued by rats. And I had a bunch of them. I hired a professional and he got most of them but the patriarch or the group evaded capture. We tried every kind of trap and glue board in existence.

I began feeding the old guy at a regular spot every night. He came out after all the lights were turned out and loved baked potatoes or corn on the cob. He seemed to prefer raw corn instead of cooked corn.

I bought a Beeman 25 caliber air rifle with a three power scope and some rodent pellets. Mean looking little pieces of lead with a pointed tip and a flared back. Designed to tear into the flesh of small creatures and create havoc on a nervous system.

After three weeks of feeding him I had identified the hole he came through to get his evening meal.

I set up one night with a bag of potatoes for an arm rest and sighted in the target area. I put a couple of oranges in the hole and shot at them until I got the middle.

I turned off all of the light except a red one which didn’t seem to bother him and waited.

He quietly exited his hole and smelled the air for signs of a human presence when I shot.

I could see him very clearly through the three power scope and he heard the quiet pop of the air rifle and raised his little head. I had tried for a head shot but he lifted his head and I got him in the chest. Straight through the heart.

He dropped like a lead weight and never knew what hit him.

If I could have had his head mounted without people asking me a lot of questions I would have but I decided just to throw him in the dumpster.

He was quite an opponent and I admired his stealth and resourcefulness.

[Noel]

If I could have had his head mounted without people asking me a lot of questions I would have but I decided just to throw him in the dumpster.

Although perhaps a fitting resting place, my heart goes out to little Ben for being destined to rot in 'Dumpster'...

[penzman]

Glue trap and a shovel.

Rat gets caught on trap, guillotine it with a shovel, dispose of trap. I use cardboard and spread on the glue. Works like a charm.

Why release a rat so it can reproduce and bring in more rats...

Wait until they start urinating around the house, the smell is horrible, we had to clean out our storage room where rats had been locked in while we were away on holidays, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g smelled of urine and had to be washed with soap and bleach.

Be careful so your domestic pets can't come in contact with the glue! Not that it's toxic but nearly impossible to wash off. Use baby oil if needed.

[GuestHouse]

I can’t answer your question but I can tell you ….

How Not To Get Rid of Rats Humanely

A few years back we had rats coming into our kitchen from the back of the house, couldn’t keep the beggers out.

I tried all sorts of humane rat traps, none worked.

Our maid said she’d get rid of them and promised to trap them without killing them – She was true to her word.

I returned home a few nights later to hear ‘rattyesque’ squeaks coming from inside the cupboard under the kitchen wash basin. The squeaks got louder when I turned the lights on, but there was non of the familiar scurrying noises of 'ratty' and friends escaping.

Ah! Thought I, the maid has caught the rats, and I made a mental note to add a ‘Rat Catcher’s Bonus’ to her next pay packet – I was in the process of calculating a suitable sum and pondering, the merits of rat weight versus rat numbers as the basis of calculating her bonus, when I was forced to reconsider my largesse.

I opened the cupboard and peered in to discover a constellation of little brown rodent eyes returning my gaze from within the dark recesses behind the washing powder.

A whole family, Mummy rat, Daddy rat and lots of little baby rats, all looking at me with pleading eyes. The baby rat eyes where not brown but a cute shade of sugar pink.

When I moved the washing powder to get a better look I received the double shock – A din erupted and the reason for the din was clear. Rat glue.

Our maid had gone to demonic lenghts not to kill the critters and pasted hyper sticky rat glue to strips of cardboard. The family of rats were stuck to this like shit to a blanket. Not dead, but definitely not going anywhere fast.

So what now? thinks I.

And please, I hope you’ll understand, clear thought while assailed with the frightened looks of a rat family and deafened by their plaintive calls is not easy.

There where not many options, my first thought, running them over in my car was a no no, it would, I figured, result in squashed rats glued to my car tires. Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t matter so much, they would after-all wear off in a day or two. But it happened to be my turn to pick the kids up from school, I could not take the risk of my squashed rats being spotted by tender hearts, no matter how noble my intentions in squashing them.

The solution I decided was to be found in the garden shed.

I carried the strips of laden cardboard – not an easy task - out to the garden and placed them in an empty paint pot retrieved from the shed.

I then squirted in to the pot a good measure of lighter fluid, went back into the house, turned on the HiFi (full blast to drown out the noise) and returned to the garden with a lighted match.

I’ll miss the details out, but let it be said they went out to the strains of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

I’d have put on Carmina Burana but I was in a rush not to end their suffering.

I wasn’t happy with the maid, but what could I do, she was a demon with an iron and did my shirts to perfection.

Edited July 4, 2006 by GuestHouse

[bina]

a couple of guys from issaan with sling shots;

it works wonders

[tutsiwarrior]

a couple of guys from issaan with sling shots;

it works wonders

I say buh-shed...flame throwers, goddammid...

those of us survivors of the rat wars should meet up sometime...I gots to show off my necklace of little rats paws to someone...

[udon]

If there was an award for best post of the day, Kerry & Guesthouse would share it.

Thank for the entertainment.

[sebastian]

Water monitor!!

[helitool]

Here's how us red-necks do it. Mount a board like a teter-toter to the edge of a large tub of water with bait at the end of the board over the water. The rat will walk up the board, when he gets to the bait the board will tip vertical and he will fall into the water where he will find a floating piece of wood just large enough for one rat.

When another rat falls in they will fight over the piece of wood and one will kill the other, etc., etc. until you have a tub of dead rats and only one live one left to kill.

Now if you are having problems with deer eating your rosebushes try my fence charger and peanut butter deterent

[Scott]

Best of luck girlx--that's how I ended up in Thailand. Last country I was in, I had a rat in my apartment, so I moved to a new country.

Sounds like you might want to cross Vietnam off your list!

[Gary A]

I certainly DON'T recommend glue boards. We had a rat(s) take up residence in the garage. I wanted to buy some rat poison but my wife wouldn't hear of that. She went out and bought a couple of glue boards. She managed to catch a neighbors cat who managed to drag one of the boards to our front gate where he got free but left a lot of his fur. The other board managed to catch jing joks and one took gae.

[chownah]

Girlx,

I use a hefty piece of wood to crush rat skulls. One solid blow and they are done....it is likely totally painless and definitely instantaneous...although I do have a moment of sorrow when doing this and the realization that someday a big chunk of wood may come out of the sky and crush my skull.....and if this happens then I guess that's ok.

Chownah

P.S. I don't swat them with the wood...no like using a baseball bat. I hit them end wise with the wood...like a pile driver.....very effective.

Chownah

Edited July 5, 2006 by chownah

[Martin]

'Boon Mee' said, in post 4:

"I'm pretty much Buddhist in my general attitudes but have no reservations about taking out a rat with extreme prejudice. They do spread disease(s)."

My wife is very buddhistic---going to the temple in the early morning to listen to the wise monk, having her late parents' wooden house dismantled and recycled into a 'bhutti' at the temple, and so on.

She won't take life, except that she traps rats with glue and executes them, and does in mosquitos with a zapper.

According to her, Buddha allowed this (though I doubt if even Buddha foresaw high-voltage zappers!).

[sbk]

girlx, they have the live rat traps in Thong Sala, the old Lim Pi Pong's opposite the Siam city Bank. But, most of the hardware shops have them. It is a stainless cage with a spring trap. You set the bait in the trap on the hook --anyway, you'll see it, ask them to demonstrate for you if you don't understand.

We take our rats out onto the beach and let the dogs hunt them down. 100% success rate and I don't feel like a murderer

[h90]

For in house rodents we use rat glue and when we find one stuck to it we crush its skull so it dies quickly and doesn't suffer needlessly

oh-yikes. i don't know if i could crush a rat's skull- how do you do it? i don't think i could live with myself. once in NY though i used a glue trap to catch a small rat. i thought i could just peel him off the glue and let him go elsewhere- not the case, you would peel his skin off of him since the glue is so strong. i didn't know what to do so i just threw the trap out in the street (with the rat screaming)... had nightmares all night long about the suffering the poor thing was going through. found the dead body a day or two later. i find things like this to be totally traumatic.

does anyone know if one of those trap door rat cages can be found in thailand? what about the spring-loaded mousetraps like they have in the US?

therefore these traps are banned in developed countries (like europe). When you use these traps in food production companies, you see things, which would cause you more than 1 sleepless night (serval rats at one place, try to bite of their own legs, half eat the next rat which is still living.......

[chownah]

For in house rodents we use rat glue and when we find one stuck to it we crush its skull so it dies quickly and doesn't suffer needlessly

oh-yikes. i don't know if i could crush a rat's skull- how do you do it? i don't think i could live with myself. once in NY though i used a glue trap to catch a small rat. i thought i could just peel him off the glue and let him go elsewhere- not the case, you would peel his skin off of him since the glue is so strong. i didn't know what to do so i just threw the trap out in the street (with the rat screaming)... had nightmares all night long about the suffering the poor thing was going through. found the dead body a day or two later. i find things like this to be totally traumatic.

does anyone know if one of those trap door rat cages can be found in thailand? what about the spring-loaded mousetraps like they have in the US?

therefore these traps are banned in developed countries (like europe). When you use these traps in food production companies, you see things, which would cause you more than 1 sleepless night (serval rats at one place, try to bite of their own legs, half eat the next rat which is still living.......

If you are talking about glue traps, they are readily available in the US....but then maybe the US is not a developed country....like Europe. The humane way to use glue traps is to check them every morning and dispatch the catch....so to speak....keeping suffering to a minimum.

[Patsycat]

Get a cat or two..or three or four...

[meadish_sweetball]

A standard spring loaded mouse trap would just maim the rat, not kill it. They are also pretty messy to clean up sometimes.

[h90]

'Boon Mee' said, in post 4:

"I'm pretty much Buddhist in my general attitudes but have no reservations about taking out a rat with extreme prejudice. They do spread disease(s)."

My wife is very buddhistic---going to the temple in the early morning to listen to the wise monk, having her late parents' wooden house dismantled and recycled into a 'bhutti' at the temple, and so on.

She won't take life, except that she traps rats with glue and executes them, and does in mosquitos with a zapper.

According to her, Buddha allowed this (though I doubt if even Buddha foresaw high-voltage zappers!).

Martin buddhism is as corrupt as the other main religions are....

I have in mind the monk who told that it is OK to kill communists (don't argue it was just one missleaded monk, as I didn't see all the other monks declare that this is wrong).

I see the monks bringing good luck to the army and their guns....

And I see them buying DVD player and porno movies at a large scale.....

I don't want to tell that the buddhism as idea is wrong, but whereever humans are involved the rules and ideas get bend till the are not even near to what they were original....

[chuchok]

A warning shot through the head works wonders......

[bina]

i have to add this:

last week, harriet, our white and brown pet rat (cost 10 NIS at the pet shop) was accidently released by a child, leaving her life partner, mabel, in the cage.... a week later harriet came back to visit, but only after she had eaten our rat poison that we put in the holes in the walls of mly office (a caravan).... its the slow nasty type but highly effective since we have giant rats that eat our baby chicks, and other small mammals and birds... its red bricks that u tie to the inside of a pipe piece, or in a box with some bait (they love peanut butter), they eat it and die unfurtunately slowly unless u see them and can dispatch them quickly.... the rats also eat electrical wiring causing my air conditioner to never work....

[p_brownstone]

last week, harriet, our white and brown pet rat (cost 10 NIS at the pet shop) was accidently released by a child, leaving her life partner, mabel, in the cage

Well, I guess that's one solution to the progeny problem, raise only lesbian rats.

Patrick

Sorry - it's been a long day!

P

[Lourens]

It's funny you should ask. I've just been reading this great big book on "How to put your rat down" and evidently you could either hit them with the book or shoot them just above the nose.

(With appologies to MP)