There's a rat in me kitchen.........what am I gonna do?

Capn Pugwash

Capn Pugwash

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On Kite - Greece
www.boatbabysitters.com
Currently in Sliema, Malta - woke up a few days ago to find a loaf of bread totally ripped to shreds. a few droppings spotted as well. Bought some rat traps and baited with chocolate and peanut butter. So far no action but on the traps. Put some flour down to track the bugger and today spotted paw prints in the saloon. No evidence of chewing/droppings etc so now pulling up floorboards/hatches etc to find him/her/them!!

Don't want to resort to rat poison as I don't want Roland crawling into some inaccesible area to die (and stink the boat out!)

Any advice welcome.



CP
 
There's a sticky stuff you can use to trap them..you put it on a bit of cardboard or plywood ,bait in the centre and apparently they get stuck. I don't know what it's called ,but I am sure someone will come along with an answer.
 
If you dont want it to crawl away to die try placing a stone or pebble in the middle of the saloon floor and sprinkle some pepper around it . When the rat sniffs the pepper he sneezes and in the process bangs his head on the stone either knocking himself out or better still killing himself. Job done . Yea I know
spank2.gif
 
Rats and rodents in general are very cunning and wary. Because you have handled the rat trap during loading with food and especially the amount of handling and pressure required to load the spring, you have left human body grease and smell all over the trap and this will warn the rat not to venture near.

You need to wash off the smell, better still, unload the spring, wash it clean and take the trap ashore and rub it in the mud and grass but during this and afterwards, handle only by holding through a poly bag which is also suitably smelling of grass and mud.

Without touching it with your bare hands, re-load the trap and prime the spring and place it at the edge of the cabin. Rodents tend to run around the edge of rooms and open spaces and cabin soles.

Roland will then be history.

ps: I used to have a sheep farm in Wales and learn this from other farmers.
 
peppermint essence. available from chemists here in UK, not sure about Malta.
It doesn't obviously kill rodents but they hate the smell of it. Sprinkle around in the bilges, behind cupboards, lockers etc and rodents then will vacate premises. The boat might smell minty fresh for a while but worth it.
 
lenseman said:
Rats and rodents in general are very cunning and wary. Because you have handled the rat trap during loading with food and especially the amount of handling and pressure required to load the spring, you have left human body grease and smell all over the trap and this will warn the rat not to venture near.

You need to wash off the smell, better still, unload the spring, wash it clean and take the trap ashore and rub it in the mud and grass but during this and afterwards, handle only by holding through a poly bag which is also suitably smelling of grass and mud.

Without touching it with your bare hands, re-load the trap and prime the spring and place it at the edge of the cabin. Rodents tend to run around the edge of rooms and open spaces and cabin soles.

Roland will then be history.

ps: I used to have a sheep farm in Wales and learn this from other farmers.
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As above, basically once you have the death trap, leave it alone until its done its job.

You will have to kill the bugger though, thats the reality its just how you do it. Dried foods mixed with Plaster of Paris used to be favorite, as rats can't throw up so it sets really well; slow but it works!
 
Been there!

Oh man, we bleed for you, after we went through this in the summer. See our blog post on the topic here.

So - clean madly but leave a place that doesn't smell of mint/ammonia/you. The top of our diesel tank worked for us. Use big traps and strong cheese. For us, the glue stuff didn't work at all, not did peanut butter. We killed it in a weighted bucket over the side.

During our war on Maurice, we got rid of all our plastic topped food containers - I don't mean lock&locks etc, but the actual cartons. (He opened a tub of shrimp paste and scattered it everywhere before we did this). Any we did keep, such as oil bottles, spent the nights on deck in separate boxes.

It took several days but we won in the end. Deeply unpleasant. Good luck.
 
Well, if you're daft enough to release a rat after you've gone to all the trouble of catching it I think its the ultimate own goal.

Instead of harassing the poor creature with a trap why not reason with it and appeal to its better nature to behave and join in observing the voluntarily accepted behavioural guidelines on board...

Hang on - what was the matter with the trap if it was still alive after it was caught? Something here does not compute.
 
I freely admit to not knowing how our unreliable informants could be sure it was the same rat! But it is true that they released the rat and got back to find they still had a rat on board but they didn't believe that the first one was breeding.

We ended up with a live one because we were too optimistic on the size of traps and the only one which caught the b---r was the humane trap which did encapsulate him but meant we had to kill it.
 
rat

We chartered a yacht/ shed out of Lefkas earlier this year and it was riddled with them it sounded as though he keel was rubbing on shingle all night and most of the day.
We made the mistake of leaving used pots in the sink which they made a huge row in and woke us up.
There droppings were approx 16mm long!!
We tried the glue, and saw the foot prints left in it, they nibble the chocolate but escaped, the trap didnt work either.

we should have used a bag when setting the trap.

The charter company would not reembuse us for the costs of the traps etc.
 
Capn Pugwash said:
Currently in Sliema, Malta - woke up a few days ago to find a loaf of bread totally ripped to shreds. a few droppings spotted as well. Bought some rat traps and baited with chocolate and peanut butter. So far no action but on the traps. Put some flour down to track the bugger and today spotted paw prints in the saloon. No evidence of chewing/droppings etc so now pulling up floorboards/hatches etc to find him/her/them!!

Don't want to resort to rat poison as I don't want Roland crawling into some inaccesible area to die (and stink the boat out!)

Any advice welcome


Hello
Try a cage trap with a small piece of apple as bait
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Visit a zoo and see if you can proff a fresh lion turd which you then distribute strategically on board. Apparently this is amazingly effective as a "best leave now" signal...

Does little for the on board ambience I expect, but hey, if it works!


Why a bulky cage trap? You want something powerful and decisive. If you use traps, proper traditional rat traps are the answer.
 
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Place a small generator in the saloon and start it. Shut all hatches and doors then listen for the engine to start struggling......it needs oxygen. Hold your nose, nip down below and stop the engine before it starts to spew out smoke, then shut the door again and leave it for 15 mins or so. Roland will try to escape and be found dead near the door!
 
hmm thinking back to my Army days. We were stuck in a wooden billet at Larkhill and the place had RATs. The Army method was to smoke em out. So why not get a smoke pellet the ones that garden centres sell ? It might work.

Peter
 
rivonia said:
hmm thinking back to my Army days. We were stuck in a wooden billet at Larkhill and the place had RATs. The Army method was to smoke em out. So why not get a smoke pellet the ones that garden centres sell ? It might work.

Peter
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Be warned that the stink left in the saloon after fumigation will make a dead rat smell seem inviting.

Traditional large spring based rat traps (Little Nipper is the brand in the UK) do the business every time. I use a fresh peanut out of the bird food supplies - we get them coming into the cottage in winter rather than on the boat. When disposing of the body, put your hand inside a poly bag, lift up the rat & turn the bag inside out & knot it before lobbing into a bin. Do not handle even a dead rat.

You also need to mask its scent in lockers, bilges etc to prevent others coming aboard looking for it - that's probably what happened with the rapid return tale above. Peppermint (or whtever it was suggested earlier) sounds a good idea.
 
Rat Trap

This is a timely thread,although our trap is best suited for large spaces where the remote human operator can hide successfully.In our case the trap is centred on the lawn ,where the rural rats displaced from the fields are now getting peckish and are encouraged by my wife's insistence on multiple bird feeders.I must say it doesn't help to have a feeder immediately over my trap so that the hovering blackbirds and finches are constantly shedding seed cases but peanut butter seems to trump this as a lure to the extent that we have caught 5 smallish ones-rats that is- over the last 5 days.Only the big daddy,which I'm not sure I really want to trap,has immediately broken out before it could be secured,although the weight of a further brick has now been added.
No rats have been injured during these proceedings.They have been released in circumstances from which they cannot readily return to the vicinity and indeed their life chances may have been enhanced.

I can recommend this method to the House.
 
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