There is a fucking rat in my garden

[Wonderdogdoris]

Obviously you can't burn down a garden...or can you?

What should I do? The fucker just looked at me and then scuttled through my garden to the neighbours. The neighbour has foxes and that is bad enough but now rats I'm horrified.

Ohh it’s so hot make sure it has shade food and water

seriously try and establish there not taken up camp under a shed or something
like us they like there food and it was probably just passing through

there a garden that backs on to the bottom corner of ours they’ve has had a few rat infestation they have massive decking and rabbits they must love it the as they never ventured into ours it was that bad they had to take the decking up
Rat man said they had food and comfortable they won’t go elsewhere

They suspect there are still nutria in England (someone thought they were killing a HUGE rat by a stream in 2012, and it was a nutria) and they’ve reintroduced an absolute shite ton of beavers.

Everyone has rats in their garden.

An A&E consultant at Richmond Hospital told my mum that cat bites are far more dangerous than rat bites. Her sick old lady cat with dioreah had bitten her and her finger swelled up like a courgette.

The chances of being bitten by a rat are minuscule. They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them.

Oh come on, it’s not a massive reaction if you’re phobic. I had them in the bin and checked into a Premier Inn for two nights until Rentokil had been.

OP - will possibly be people feeding birds or in my case demolished a shed where they were nesting. Try to remove food sources, put down bait poison boxes and sprinkle Jeyes fluid where you see them running - they hate the smell.

Oh god MN is like my local fb group- apparently it’s fine to feed the urban foxes in your garden and rats are welcome- it’s their world too.
in my world I fucking hate them and would lay poison everywhere!

You shouldn't see rats in the day unless there is an infestation I don't think. I would ask pest control most are 24 hr

What you should do is shrug and carry on with your life.

Rats pee and poo as they go. They carry Lyme disease among others. Hardly just a harmless furry creature.

OnlyFoolsnMothers · Today 20:25
Oh god MN is like my local fb group- apparently it’s fine to feed the urban foxes in your garden and rats are welcome- it’s their world too.
in my world I fucking hate them and would lay poison everywhere”

Foxes and rats aren’t responsible for climate change.

I don't want to worry you but...
The rat's probably weighing up it's options, and is considering moving into your house. Was it carrying a tape measure?

So just ignore it. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t use diy poison, it can easily harm other wildlife, pets and children.

If you see or hear one in the house (they can climb inside walls and nest in loft insulation) or you find the nest in your garden - they like sandy spaces under flagstones and fence posts, call an exterminator and see what they advise.

Fine, you’re not an animal lover, I’m sure the rat isn’t keen on humans. You can just leave each other alone.

It’s funny, wherever anyone mentions being in close proximity to a spider on jere you get screeches of ‘burn your house down’, ‘move country’ etc, but rats are ok! I hate rats. I have a phobia of rodents. Seeing a rat in my garden would massively freak me out, even though I rationally know it has every right to be there.
On the other hand I can quite happily live with spiders sharing my space.

Get a Jack Russell.

Wow, I was literally today years old when I learned nutria exist. I would never have killed any, that's anathema to me, I was just very paranoid about small ds being in the garden.

What are you gonna do? You need to fix that rat.

this is why I have a gun in every room

only proven way to get rid of rats, and any other pests

OP you don't know it's living in your garden it left so it's no longer in your garden

And by proxy, every other animal that eats those rats?

We found a young barn owl dying in our garden last year, beautiful creature. Not a mark on it so it wasn’t injured, we took it to the vet so they could PTS as it was suffering, they said it most likely ate a poisoned rat. Very sad

Please don't put poison down, it's really dangerous

Completely normal and healthy reaction to animals existing

I'm not going to put poison down. I have a young child. He wouldn't know not to eat it himself. I caught him eating a bird poo only last year and that was bad enough. I'll do some fence investigations tomorrow and barricade the door tonight [only half joking].

Also thanks to all who also would not want a rat in your garden for not making me feel quite as stupid.

That’s kinda where they live..

Only if it's in the kitchen though!

There's a viral TikTok with a cute toddler looking through the glass door, pointing to the garden, saying 'there's a f*cking goat'.
Your post reminded me of that!

@gretgret I would say I'd prefer a goat but I don't like those either 😆