Rats in the house

[PackRat]

AIBU to think if you've detected rat activity in a cluttered room, the best course to getting rid of them is to declutter the room, clean it thoroughly and set traps? My DP thinks that now we know the rats are in that room we should just leave it as it is and set traps to ensure we lure them to their death. I think that sounds like a pretty dumb idea, as surely we need to be able to work exactly how they're getting in so we can also look at blocking that off. I also hate the thought of stale rat piss being all over the room.

There are humane live catch traps cheaply available online. You don’t have to kill or poison them.

I agree with your Dh about poison.
I used to work somewhere where they poisoned mice. Firstly finding them dead was horrible, one was simply on the floow and they die in inconvenient places like behind fridges and you can only tell by the smell. I was convinced that the kitchen smelt and ended up ripping out some cupboards (to my managers horror!) And found one stuck behind a kitchen cupboard.

If they don't die in the house, then they die outside which is a risk to local cats, dogs and general wildlife like foxes, birds etc who all will eat and become sick or potentially die themselves

Glue traps are also awful and should be illegal in my view (and most humane organisations eg. The rspca have long campaigned for them to be outlawed)

I'm pretty sure it's rats by how loud the noise of it moving around was. There's probably a decent size nest in the undergrowth in my neigbour's garden as it was starting to come over our fence and that's 6ft high!

Sounds like you have a useless partner problem as well as a rat problem Unfortunately, I think this is going to make or break the relationship and most likely it will be the latter. It's a shame as we get on so well in almost all other aspects of the relationship and have been together 12 years. It's one thing me bearing the load of the day to day cleaning and him having his space to keep how he likes. But seeing that he's ok with having fucking rats amongst his stuff knowing that their coming into our shared spaces. I'm not sure I have the mental strength to deal with this.

What attracts them and how do you know you have them? In this case they came in from a neighbour's garden when they started to clear it after allowing it to become extremely overgrown. They like a place to nest and a source of food and water. Basically keep your garden tidy, clean your kitchen regularly (don't leave food out) and general clutter to a minimum.

Set traps.

Don't use rat bait poison, because the last thing you need is multiple rat corpses stinking from their mystery unaccessible tombs under floorboards etc.

(Don't ask how I know...).

It sounds like it's worth trying to figure out what's a reasonable concern and reaction in light of your ocd (which I'm assuming is what this post is about)

Wanting an active plan about trying to sort the problem, asking for rooms to be decluttered sounds reasonable to me

The concerns about being bitten in the night sound like anxiety or intrusive thoughts if that makes sense?

You need rat traps with peanut butter or Nutella and rat poison. We had this problem. We didn’t declutter first because we didn’t want to disturb their travel routes before we caught them (they tend to use the same routes looking for food etc) also we felt it would waste time. We got rid of all of ours in 4 to 8 weeks. We thought ours were just in the attic until I woke up on the sofa downstairs with one scurrying over me! I don’t mean to scare you but if they are in a room they will not be contained to that room. We put traps everywhere - under the chimney breast, behind sofas, beds, drawers etc. they tend to run where they think they will be undetected behind things. Ours were getting into the attic through a neighbouring tree that was close to our roof and using the chimney breast to explore our house! Good luck. It’s horrible, but it is fixable.

I would try your local authority - some council environmental depts charge pest control for mice but they often don't charge to get rid of rats because they're potentially a greater public health concern, and they act quicker for rats too

Been there with rats in the loft and the wall cavity. Found when they chewed upnthw washing machine and dishwasher electrics. You need the professionals in and to throw away anything contaminated with rat pee. Once gone get a cat or two as extra deterant. Ratan actually told us this does work but only if the cats still active. Our 18 yr old sloth moggy was a waste of time. Mow.replaced ( following natural death) by 2 young fit mousers

Wanting an active plan about trying to sort the problem, asking for rooms to be decluttered sounds reasonable to me Thanks, that may actually help me get through to my partner too. He's suggested and helped me write down action plans in the past when I've been struggling with my mental health. I'm going to ask him to help me move the furniture to look for entry routes.

I won't use poison, but how many traps do people think I should get for a three bedroom house? Are the bait box type ones (without poison) worth getting?

We had rats last year. It nearly finished me off and we don’t have a garbage or clutter issue. They were coming up from the outside drains and entering the house by the dishwasher. We had some kind of gates/ traps fritter to prevent any more coming in and then set about killing the remaining rats.

We had rat traps laden with peanut butter which is apparently their snack of choice. First evening we caught two. Then a few days later the next one and eventually we got the lot.

The damage was unreal. They chewed through our internet cable, left piss and crap in corners all over the place and generally made me feel quite ill.

We had a man in and he was expensive but thorough. You could probably do it all yourself but having seen a dead rat I really was ok about outsourcing that job.

To the PP who says don’t kill them I can only presume you haven’t had this particular joy on your life. Oddly we also had neighbours who had been too embarrassed to say they’d had them too. I wish they had.

They're definitely getting killed. I don't like the idea of killing animals, but they are vermin and I don't want anyone to get ill from them. That's a good shout on the drain covers, going to go check they haven't blown off with the recent bad weather. I'll put some peanut butter in the traps, I think DP has tried cheese and cranberry sauce so far, but with no luck.

Oddly I'm still not seeing any droppings or chewed skirting boards, I'm hoping that means we can nip the problem in the bud before it gets too out of hand. Also surprised my dog isn't reacting more to their access points as he's normally all over the scent of anything small and furry.

@EmpressCixi

Rats (and mice) cannot chew through medium steel wool. So use steel wool and caulk or steel wool and expanding foam to block any entry holes and keep them from chewing back in. They do sell caulking with steel wool already in if you don’t want to deal with steel wool separate from caulk.

This, but don't completely block air bricks or you will end up with other problems. You can get mesh with quite thick wires and tiny holes that you can fix over air bricks.

I have had mice or rats in 3 out of 4 of the houses I have lived in as have all my family we live on or near farmland so its very normal here. Its actually very common everywhere but people don't talk about it. I am a very clean and tidy person so its not just my hygiene standards causing them.
My dog couldn't care less about them. My cat is an expert mouser and when I see her sitting in one place for a while I know we have one. It does cause somewhat of a deterrent having a cat but its not 100% and even with my cat being smelly and active we do still get them. I have managed to get on top of them myself in one house. In another I couldn't and neither could a couple of professionals I got in because the neighbours did nothing about it and with the best will in the world you cannot block every single hole in an old house, i moved but for multiple reasons.
Recently I hired a professional who knew his stuff. Best I have had and got rid of mice in a matter of weeks. We were previously catching 5 or more a day ! I was well impressed with him. Fingers crossed they have not returned and we hope to have blocked their access.
If honestly get the professionals in op if you have never experienced this before.
Although the lack of droppings is confusing. If you had even 1 in you would see droppings behind furniture where you heard them. Not necessarily chewed stuff yet. Have you looked along the skirting board behind stuff in that room.

Although the lack of droppings is confusing. If you had even 1 in you would see droppings behind furniture where you heard them. Not necessarily chewed stuff yet. Have you looked along the skirting board behind stuff in that room. I can't move the furniture in the cluttered room by myself as it's a huge heavy office desk and wardrobes. It's basically DP's mancave and he's still sticking to his guns that he's not moving anything until he's caught the rat in his trap. He's convinced there's only one of them possibly two. It's selfish and petty I know, but I kind of hope they chew up something he cares about so he starts to take it more seriously before we have a serious infestation.

I'm patrolling and inspecting all the other rooms daily and not seeing droppings anywhere. I've ordered some more kitchen containers so I can decant food items still in packets to something more robust. Touch wood, there's still no signs of nibbled food in the kitchen.

Get an ultra violet torch and any rat urine will show up.

To the PP who says don’t kill them I can only presume you haven’t had this particular joy on your life.

I have. Most recently last month they invaded the closet under the stairs from under the house. I noticed it straight away and took action the same day..the no kill humane traps you can wash and reuse so we had some from the last invasion before that.

I know it's already been answered but as for your question about rat bites: not common. They're much more likely to run away from you and will only attack if they're cornered with no escape route.

I lived in the rat infested house I mentioned up thread for about a year and a half (shudder!) and very rarely actually saw the rats even though they were everywhere.

I have noticed you haven't actually seen them? There's a really good chance, then, that you have mice rather than rats. Rodents always seem to sound about three times their actual size when they're scuttling around in walls and floors so if you think they sound rat-sized you might be lucky and find they're actually mice. If it sounds like you have small dogs running around, though, they'll be rats...

I have noticed you haven't actually seen them? There's a really good chance, then, that you have mice rather than rats. That's good to know - I'm hoping it was just a mouse and the echoes made it sound louder. We have a big greyhound (no rat dogs in this house ) and at times I've been convinced I've heard an elephant going up and down the stairs! I did see a young rat hanging around my neighbour's bird feeder a few months back, so my mind automatically went to rats.

Touch wood we haven't heard or witnessed any rodent activity since Monday night. I scoured and tidied the spare room on Tuesday and didn't find much damage or mess - just a slightly chewed door which I smeared in hot pepper sauce

To the posters suggesting live catch traps, what do you do with ratty once you catch it? It is not legal to release rats onto anyone else's property and I can't see any landowners or councils agreeing to have them! It is unpleasant but sometimes poison (used by a professional) is the only way if all else fails.

OP not sure if this will feed your anxiety, but hopefully it won't. Here is what I did when I had rats: carry a tennis ball around. When you enter a new room throw it ahead of you into the wood flooring or skirting boards. You're still 'safe' but the racket and reverb will alert the rats to your presence and make them hide. That's step 1. Step 2 (for us) involved getting a builder in, removing all the units in the kitchen, blocking any holes, settings traps and posion, inspecting drains, replacing a section of the drain, filling gaps in the external walls, keeping the shed clear, cementing over disturbed parts of the shed, filling internal gaps with wire wool... And we were lucky! It could have been much worse!

My point is you are right, you can't set a trap and walk away whistling. It's a big job. The tennis ball trick is a good one though.

It’s a nightmare when they’ve actually invaded your home and are destroying it, not like the poster who used a humane trap on what sounds like an easily sorted issue.
Your boyfriend sounds like a complete thicko.

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to give me good advice, I was worried about posting in AIBU, but you've all been gentle with me which is appreciated. Tomorrow's job is to scour the kitchen and try to fill in any gaps with caulk and steel wool. I don't think that they're living in the house yet fortunately, so I'm going to do my best to keep it that way. I'm going to contact a rat proofing place for advice on Monday, as I'm pretty sure there's a small gap somewhere in our external wall and that's how they're getting in.

Your boyfriend sounds like a complete thicko. He's actually really intelligent in most aspects of life, but sadly lacking in common sense at times. He's also extremely stubborn which makes the whole situation all the more frustrating. He doesn't get to 'win' this one though as I'm not having our house get destroyed by rats . I'm sorting out the house, then getting him to pay for a regular cleaner in future so I don't have to deal with all of the household crap myself.

If you’ve only heard them, are you sure it’s not birds nesting in your roof/eaves? Having had both (and still have birds!), they sound exactly the same.

The council can usually deal with such problems