Posts: 274
Threads: 25
Joined: Nov 2003
I second the electric rat traps. They work great and no yucky mess. We had the same thing happen in my husband's brand new 6 month old toyota truck. The rats caused $600 in wire damage. The mechanic at Toyota told us to buy cat urine, I guess you can buy it commercially..no joke..and to spray it in the trunk area of your car. We didn't try that. But we did get 2 good mouser cats plus the electric trap. We caught 7 rats in the first week. One was there every morning. After that there were none. It's been 5 years and I haven't seen any signs of them around. Angela
Posts: 2,149
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Rodents chewing wires and lines in cars is common. We had a problem with squirrels and chipmunks doing it in Georgia. I have had good results using those green cubes that Kapohocat mentioned. We bought a black box at Home Depot that has small holes that the rats go through to feed on the cubes inside. That keeps anything but the tiniest household pets from getting in there. The black boxes are heavy plastic and have mountings inside for the cubes to hang from. Very effective.
Edited to add: Also, nobody in Puna should be too embarrassed by this problem because rats are all over this place. We have some neighbors who built a palacial home by HPP standards, and within three months of moving in they were mortified by a major infestation of rats inside the house. Those of us who had some experience with these matters just shrugged and offered helpful advice, as you're seeing on Punaweb.
Posts: 2,980
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Uh, yeah, my first experience with this was in a romantic moment in the hot tub. There was a small tree next to the hot tub with a gorgeous pendulous blossom. I heard something move in the tree just two feet away and saw two beady eys and the biggest rat I have seen in my life...or maybe the FIRST rat I have seen in my life.
I gotta get that black thingy with the green cubes. I chopped down the tree. It was threatening to lift the garage roof. First use of chain saw! So fun.
Posts: 1,839
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My never fail rat trap:
I use a standard, old fashioned rat trap. My twist is that I use a drop of gorilla glue to attach a piece of oatmeal cookie onto the bait holder. The glue needs a day to dry, then I put the trap out. If there is a rat within 100 yards, he's mine! Reload and go again. Pretty soon, no more rats.
Dan
Posts: 806
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Rats, spiders, flies. Renfield!
I made an effective rat trap that was on wheels. They work like a charm, but have to be replaced frequently.
Lee Eisenstein
http://members.cruzio.com/~lionel/event
Posts: 3,188
Threads: 216
Joined: Sep 2007
the newer traps have larger yellow plastic "trips" - work well the jaw looking traps work well also
I had trouble with them taking the bait - until I propped the trap up at a 90 degree angle so the little bas.... would have to reach up for the bait
either way beats getting the wafarin into the environment
- the owls and 'Io (hawks) take the wafarin dosed rats as well, then take it back to the nest to feed the chicks - not a good compound to get into the food chain if you care about the birds and other critters on your lot
Posts: 771
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I seen those 21st century better traps at Home Depot and Long's. For once the Home Depot much cheaper. Those venerable 19st cent traps so scary- hate to get your finger in the way if you don't secure the bar right.
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I think all the Ace Hardware stores carry the elecric (and they are battery powered) rat zapper type gizmos. Some friends use them and they work very well too.
jon
Jon in Puyallup, Wa.
Jon in Keaau/HPP
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Thank you for all the help. Has anyone ever heard of leaving the car hood up all night with a light hanging on it to keep rats from getting into the engine? If so, do you know if it works? Do moth balls in the engine work? Aloha ~
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@sistersue: I can't speak for Hawaii, but back at home on the mainland where I grew up, we had rats near our house at one point in time. I had heard that if you find their home location and travel paths you could disrupt them with the use of moth balls. We found some holes under the fence/bushes and places around the food source we knew the rats visited. It seemed to work, they didn't like the moth balls and took off.
I am dealing with a similar situation here in Hawaii as I type. We used to have a lot of outdoor cats around our house, but as the renters near us moved out and took their cats, we find ourselves in a serious rat issue (and I used to curse the outdoor cats - live an learn). We have rats coming in from under the post-n-pier elevated portion of the house. They wake us up at night - no way a mouse could chew that loud. We've opted not to use poison up to this point as we're afraid the rats will eat the poison and then shack up in the walls and die. Does anyone know whether that's what the rats do? Do they shack up in the walls until their nocturnal time comes? We may get an outside spayed cat from the animal shelter - worried about fleas there with our inside dogs going out to potty. That's the flip side, since all the outside cats gone, our dogs haven't had any fleas. What a conundrum.
Tomorrow I plan to take the day off from work and wage war against the rats - see where they are coming in and try and screen those off. I sure hope Algernon isn't one of the rat pack.
Any advice from the gallery would be appreciated.
Cheers!
