Rats in the ceiling

[dick dasterdly]

Better to use glue trap trays. Put some peanut butter in the middle. Then it wont die on roof. You can dispose of it privately.

Glue traps are disgustingly cruel. One of my dogs was a good ratter and in the middle of the night he jumped on my bed with a glue trap and three mice stuck to it still alive and shrieking stuck to his fur. Took bloody hours to get it all off him. No hope for the rats and they died a long slow starved death. Better to shove some tokays up there. I've a few in my roof but it's wood, so anything would drop through the slats. The tokays sort them out, quickly. Or a rat snake

Couldn't agree more which is why I wouldn't dream of using them.

A couple of my dogs are 'ratters' too and one morning I went out to find a dead rat in the carport with live, unborn babies.... They were too young to even try to save them and I'm ashamed to admit that I was incapable of putting them out of their misery. My cleaner had to do it for me .

If you are looking to rid yourself of a rat infestation, the glue traps are very good at what they do. You can get tesco brand 2 pack hard trays for 32 baht. You can either drown the rats or end their life with other methods. I wouldn't recommend leaving them around especially if you have cats, snakes, etc. They may not have chased the rats before. But when they are packaged somewhat neatly for them, they are happy to collect the free lunch.

Snap traps can be effective, but you have to be careful with your hand and especially if you have kids. Cages vary, but are tricky to setup and can give many false alarms (getting bait but door doesn't close, door closes if nudged from outside, etc). The poison would be effective if it was outside only. You get the smell but it would breakdown quicker. In the house, the rat could be dead in some hard to reach crevice and then you are stuck with the smell.

In some cases, putting double-sided tape at the bottom helps it from shifting around. You can get a few rolls for 10-20 baht at big tent markets or those 20 baht shops.

edit: photo of glue trap packaging

I thought I made it clear that I find glue traps disgustingly cruel?

Rat traps work - sometimes..., other times they haven't quite been set right so the rat eats the food and runs off again .

I also mentioned that presumably the snakes have sorted out my rat infestation. I have nothing against rats, and find them cute - much to the amazement of pretty much everyone else! Nature has a way of balancing itself if left alone in my experience, as has happened at my house.

[changnoi101]

The rat in our ceiling came 'home' late afternoon and was making a load of noise, obviously up to no good. I tried a new approach. I found a YouTube clip of eagles noises. Every time I played it below where the rat was, it all went silent but when I ceased the eagle clip the rat started its business again. I then tried cats howling noises with similar results. I then tried cats fighting noises...the rat noises ceased / went away and 4 hours later haven't started again. Don't know if what I did worked or was a coincidence. I expect the rat will return, if it does I'll try the experiment again. I may try putting one of those tiny bluetooth speakers in my ceiling opening and blasting the youtube clips, maybe it will scare away the rat (s) for good.

Perhaps you can also place a 50" LCD in the ceiling, so the Rats got a little bit entertainment by watching the Youtube Clips. [emoji6]

[cliveshep]

We had rat visitors in our ground floor ceiling, bought a humane trap, baited with a bit of sausage and set it carefully so any movement on the bait hook would spring the trap. There isn't much point in setting a trap that won't spring after all.

We have a trap cut into the gypsum board ceiling - easy to do, keep the piece you saw out and trim the hole with a bit of lay-in ceiling grid "tee" and the cut out bit can drop right back in.

Put the rat trap on top of slid aside ceiling trap, slid it back and left it. Next morning released one sleek rat about a kilometer away on our way out of the village. 2 weeks later he or a family member was back so we did it again, releasing a little further away.

So far in 6 weeks no more things going bump in the night! We live among rice fields too.

[antoniuni]

A lot of answers / ideas! I think I stick to the (instant killing) rat trap.

The latest answer from the "specialist" Rentokil: "you open the ceiling, we are coming with the glue-traps and you remove them afterwards".

OK, that's it, although I like animals and don't want to kill them there are a few animals I really don't like!

I order traps from Lazada.

[worgeordie]

The Rats seem to be tree rats,usually live in trees,but when rainy season

starts they move into the roofs of houses,someone told the wife that naphtha

or moth balls worked as they don't like the smell,so we bought a couple of

bags and scattered them around in the ceiling,the house was stinking of

moth balls,so after about a week had a look up in the ceiling,and they had

eaten most of the moth balls !,

regards Worgeordie