There's a XXX in my garden! Warning.

[DottyBlue2]

It has a tail. Don't read any further if you don't like this sort of thing.

is it like Voldemort?

We have rats occasionally. Our cat likes to go and fetch them from a ditch down the road. It’s a bit unfortunate really, but they are at least easier to catch than the mice he brings.

I would contact your local council environmental health team though and they can check that things are being done hygenically and that there is no risk of food contamination.

We had an enormous rat in the garden a couple of years ago. Well, my mum did.. house is in the middle of nowhere and backs onto ten miles of fields and single track roads. God only knows where the rat came from. Thought maybe the cat but it was almost as big as him so maybe not. Although he did once try to take in a very dead partridge so wouldnt put it past him!

RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT

Sorry, but I hate this molly-coddling online community we're becoming

It's not like you posted a photo of it taking a shit in your Sunday dinner

Sorry to hear you spotted one in your garden though. They're a lot more common than most of us think.

there are rats everywhere
particularly if you have decking, it is perfect housing for them.

oh and feed the birds rats

You need to go down to the stoat shop.

I saw a rat running very fast across my garden closely followed by a very hungry stoat.

Thank you - you're all being very kind, especially as I'm in AIBU!

As long as the rats stay in the garden then I won't freak out. If they get in the house then I will go ballistic.

The cafe is trying to be posh. It has very mixed TripAdvisor reviews!

Would the environmental health people take me seriously? Would I have to have photos as photographic evidence?

I think I'm clam because we usually have a cage of pet rats, though not since we moved here - we're still considering it!

We had our garden done and there's a total refurb going on up the rod, so they've been disturbed. I've asked the builders to bait their end too.

We found a gnawed floorboard by the soil stack that comes up through the middle of the house. We took out a plug socket on the ground floor and found the hole. So later today it gets a tube of expanding foam squeezed in and in a couple of months we'll removed the box section around the pipe and make a more permanent fix to the floor.

I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks with hungry / dying rats in the loft!! Still, I have thick gardening gloves and a bin bag, must buy a jar of vicks

the rat wouldn't worry me but the fact that there was a restaurant next door definitely would.

sorry OP but next could be cockroaches. You want to get that place thoroughly investigated - not sure to whom you report.

I found a rat in the garden in London once - years ago when flatsharing, otherwise the luxury of a garden is not one I normally have!! But with so many horrible takeaway joints etc maybe we are more used to them in the city than the country.

That should be 'calm' and 'road'.

shouldnthavesaid - there are WAY more rats in the countryside than in towns! They live off grain, roots, dumped stuff...just go and watch a combine going round a field and see how many rodents come running out of the way!

(Also used to have pet rats - the domestic ones are adorable. Wild ones bite).

Cockroaches??? AaaaAaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgghh! I never thought of that. Oh my god that's disgusting. It's a terrace of 4 houses. We share a building.

sorry Dotty

I knew someone who lived next door to a restaurant in London and had that problem

Exterminator came round and said to be wary that they might transfer cockroach eggs via their shoes on entering the flat

ours has been a "shoes off" flat ever since.

we've had a couple of cockroaches in my office.

I want to live in the country but it seems like we'd need a plot of land to call our own to make sure next door doesn't become a restaurant.

Honestly, report to whoever deals with restaurant health. You must have been quite pissed off when it became a restaurant though yes?

There's a rat in my garden too. I first noticed it when it was quite small, but thought my neighbour's cat would put a quick end to it as she's an excellent hunter.

Instead she's spent hours doing the 'staring-at-my-prey and twitching her bottom thing' at it. Months later, she still spends most of her day sitting in my garden, watching it but not catching it. Now I suspect they've become friends.

It won’t harm to report to EH, then if they need evidence, they can tell you. Be really factual and non emotive when you talk to them - I have concerns about the potential hygiene in the restaurant x, because y, y and y.

Problem is that rats can be really bitey. So my cat will bring them in, but when he tries to re catch it, the blasted things bite him and he lets go again.

Saucyjack 😂😂😂

Thank you - your rat stories are making me laugh. The cockroaches are a worry though.

Yes, our house is for sale. We'll have to knock 25% off the asking price to sell it, though, bastards.

There are rats everywhere. Town and country, in buildings and outside them. I really don't think this has anything to do with the cafe.

If you are worried they might come into your house you can get ultrasonic devices which deter all vermin but they'll also deter cats, dogs and children, so you won't be able to use them if you have any of those.

It's a shame about the smells but if the cafe was there before you moved in I don't think there's anything you can do.

It wasn't there already, I'm afraid. We've been here 3 years and it opened about 6 weeks ago.

Do you know who owns the freehold? Might be helpful to report it to them.

Also, do they have the appropriate venting allowing the cooking fumes to escape via the roof? Having had a house next to the back of a London restaurant it was discovered that their smells were being extracted on to our back flat roof and not where they should have been. Resulted in them having to move the duct to their own property.

Not sure if you can do anything about the door being open unless it is to do with fire regs. Worth checking though.

I had neighbours who had more rubbish than bins and were dumping it in the front garden so I called their letting agent and it was cleared up when I mentioned rats. If they are renting via an agent there is another suggestion.

Food will attract rats, and mice. You only have to live near a cafe and you will have visitors.

Lend you my cat? He used to be a dedicated serial killer in his time. He'll do it for a bag of Dreamies, as long as each one is singly hand fed to him. He's a bit of a diva, but he assures me he'll get the job done with minimum fuss.

We have rats and live away from people but there's such lot to eat in the countryside I suspect you'd have them anyway. The real issue is you hate the new cafe.

I live in a country village and often see rats in my garden. They have a sort of 'run' up behind the shed and coal bunker, towards my neighbours chicken run. They are obviously attracted by the chicken feed. Bastard has five cockerels as well. He also has a bird table and the food gets scattered around on the floor. And three dogs that bark the whole time when he's out.
But yeah, I'd report the greasy spoon. If they get enough complaints it might get them to pull their socks up.

There was a truly horrible smell in the downstairs loo, but only occasionally. (I must confess that I blamed my husband and bought air fresheners by the pallet-load...) Long story short, there was a very dead rat decomposing in the roof space amidst a ton of rat poop; we ripped the ceiling down to get it out. That was a Saturday afternoon I don't care to think about too much.