rat in bathroom

[southeastastra]

think a rat has appeared in mil's house. she leaves potatoes out on the landing and we found one knawed in the bathroom. it must have dragged it.

can they just come upstairs?

yep rats can get up and down stairts no problem at all!

i used to have two pet rats one of thier favourite games was running up an downstairs collecting bits of biscuit and hiding them!

id set out traps

Why does she leave potatoes on the landing?

i have no idea she always has done!

i was wondering if it could just appear in a gap in the bathroom rather than climb the stairs, i set out some pellet things

yep they can 'squash' themselves like cats and can fit into some alarmingly small spaces!!

Well, if they can get up drainpipes, I wouldn't have thought stairs would present much of a challenge...

can they climb up drainpipes?

They can climb up the soil pipe from the sewers and come up through the toilet. I saw it on a program on tv ages ago. Particularly the older style cast iron pipes.

They can climb up ropes (as I saw with horror in the hen shed), roof tiles, drainpipes, you name it.
Try putting rat killer pellets in a small piece of drainpipe WELL AWAY from children and domestic pets and smear a tiny bit of peanut butter inside it.
The potatoes will attract them so your mil will have to store them in a metal bin with a lid on.

at kiddiz post- will i ever be able to sit on the toilet again- yuck yuck ycuk!

Rats are really clever (apparently) so you have to hide the traps because they won't go near them, and they love chocolate and bacon fat.

But it's better to find out how they're getting in and put poison aroung the opening, then block it up, because if you just get rid of the rat in the house another will take it's place.

rats can do anything - jump hide leap walk along walls. they are really really difficult to get rid of as they are v clever. I really wouldn't leave anything out to attract them and get the rat catchers in

I once knew a bloke who had a rat that came up via the toilet, he was puzzled as to how his bathroom wallpaper was being chewed away in the middle of the night when the bathroom door was closed. Turns out the little critters can swim up through the pipes.

I never went to the loo at his house unless I really couldn't hold it any longer.

We had one in our kitchen it had come up through our chimney's air pipe [don't know the technical term]. It dragged clothes from the wash basket and dried dog food behind the fridge and made itself quite comfortable. we got those little bags of poison and put them under the kitchen units and killed the great big blighter!.

AND they can nibble though concrete with their great big teeth. One ate it's way through the breeze block walls of a house I used to live in and was sitting in a kitchen drawer.