To ask you if there's something under my deck?

[AwfulMaureen]

The dog keeps sort of tracking something under the deck at night. Always about this time of night...she sniffs the boards and then appears to be following "something" around as it moves about beneath....I can't see under it or access it really....there's a bit of a gap at the sides but you can't peer under or anything.

I can't stand the thought of setting traps....would it be mice do you think? Or something....bigger?

I can't be calling out any exterminators to check...they;ll kill things...what if anything should I do? The deck leads directly off my French windows into the sitting room...we sometimes leave bin bags of rubbish there when the outside bin is full...not for long...about a day or two at most...could this have brought meeces?

Creeped out much?

Apologies, have had and couldn't resist!

Any chance you could just learn to love them?

Give them all names and call them your babies..?

Or by some kind of flute and dance them out of town?

I would say rats , although also possibly mice , i have just watched a little mouse having a wander around my garden , they move into our little shed in the winter and i evict them every spring

I had mice in my shed once.

They ate our bouncy castle.

It was yellow. Think they thought it was cheese..!

I reckon it's one of these.

Hahahaha

And I thought rats were the creepiest thing I could find in decking!!

OMG Pigs if it's one of those, then he's lying on his front and wriggling along...to get places.

It could easily be a hedgehog... Plenty of them just starting to honk about hibernation (thanks to mild winter so far) and decking could provide a nice spot for it.

Make sure the dog has been frontlined.

Brown okay...will do!

It's windy....but I think when DH comes in, I will get his torch...and just have a mooch.

will prob be mice, we have some that visit the rabbits, even in this weather

I bet rats. We have decking (rented house) and we have rats :( and they keep coming back :( I can't wait to move!

Call the exterminators before they find a way into your house, it's not nice having rats in your house, voice of experience here!

Do exterminators charge though? Not much cash spare...

how I just google imaged 'slow worm'. Wtf?! That IS a snake!

Lol they're legless lizards...really, really cute....

Had rats under mine, call the council

Council rodent man told me rats love decking

AwfulMaureen - that's almost exactly what happens. The mother rat leaves the babies there under the decking and goes to hunt for food. Daddy rat is a bit of a love rat and is driven off by mummy rat as he would eat her babies.

Most rats die by being eaten by other rats.

I hate decking. Slippery and and dangerous in winter. We had rats under ours. We had no rubbish lying around or anything. It's just a good shelter for them. I had pleasure in ripping up and burning the decking.

Rats.

Raffle I know!!
Was about half a metre in length hanging from a BBQ skewer after DH killed it, then googled and discovered they are protected species, oops!

We found a frog under our decking along with huge mutant (maybe not mutant just huge) spiders. Our dog hated the decking but she was a nervous dog.

Ah crap we have decking, hope no ratty families are squatting under ours!