Saturday March 22, 2008, 6:57 am
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Saturday March 22, 2008, 6:58 am
The best way to keep rats off your property is to remove any access to food or shelter. Rats are attracted to pet food and bird seed as well as garbage. Garbage and food should be stored in metal or heavy duty plastic containers. You need to seal any access to your house, even very small holes as young rats and mice can squeeze through any opening they can fit their head through.

Please do not use poison or glue traps which are inhumane.

Using a Live-Trap

If you want to remove wild rats from your home without harming them, you can use a live trap. Live traps are usually available from humane societies and feed stores. The best thing is to put the trap out and fix it so the door won't close at first so the rats will get used to eating out of it. The best bait is peanut butter put directly on the treadle. Once you know rats are eating the bait, you can set the trap. Doing it this way insures that the rat doesn't accidently set the trap off before he goes in. If that happens, he would never go in the trap again.

Now, the tricky part is where to release him. You can't just let rats go in forest or field. They must have source of water, and around water they will be able to find things to eat such as insects, worms, snails, fish, frogs, etc. So the best place to release them is at a permanent source of water such as a creek, river, lake or pond.

In most parts of the country, the common wild rats are Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus), also called brown, sewer or barn rats. In warmer climates the roof rat (Rattus rattus), also called the black rat or tree rat, can be found and is often the most common wild rat in these areas. Roof rats must be released in an area where there is water and trees.

A Rat Repellant

A woman in the Army stationed in Baghdad, Iraq emailed me with information about a rat repellant that really worked in her case. She wrote:

"A small company makes a totally harmless rat repellant called Fresh Cab. I wrote to them and they sent a big case to us for free. The product comes in little sachets (like potpourri) that smell like pine boughs (I think they have other scents too). You put the sachets in problems areas and - no more rats!! They WORK!! The smell actually keeps rats away. This is the ONLY non-kill/non-trap product I could find anywhere and it DOES work. We're talking about rodents out in the middle of the desert here too - our meals are DEFINITELY easier for them to get than anything else."

The company is:

Crane Creek Gardens

Earth-Kind, Inc.