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Varmits in my attic!!!!

T

TXTibbs

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 9, 2005
Messages
1,591
Location
South Central Texas, former South Dakotan
I dunno what they are yet, but I can hear the little bastards scurrying around up there!!! Sound big to....coon maybe or perhaps a squirrel, but hardly a squirrel since I only hear em at night and they are usually tucked in a ball asleep at night. Rats perhaps, but god these are big rats if thats what they are! Sigh.....I heard it before and didn't want to believe it but now tonight there is no mistaken it. I've got some unwanted squatters up above me! Don't quite see how its possible to be a coon tho....there arn't any holes big enough for a coon....in fact there arn't any holes big enough for anything near I can tell, but it sounds like a fair sized beast. I seen that movie "Paranormal Activity" and the thought of going up into my dark attic sends shivers down my spine. I may have to take my .22 with me for protection! Do ya'll think if it was rats that you could hear them up there scurrying around? I don't have much experience with rats, but I'd think rats wouldn't make that much of a scurry sound. Maybe I'll shove one of my dogs up there first to check it out :shock: :? :? :? :? :? :???: :???: :???: :???: :???: :???: :???:
 
Hay Maker can tell you a story about dealing with them Texas rats. If you decide to take your horse, make sure he keeps his tail down . . . :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Oh it might not fit through your attic door?
 
Agreed Burnt, Texans and packrats are not a good combination. Tibbs, we don't want to hear about you falling off the footstool and breaking your leg trying to see what's in the attic. A squirrel or a pack rat can sound like a herd of elephants in the attic.
Get one of them big rat traps that look like a mouse trap and bait it with a chunk of raw onion. Your troubles will be soon over.
 
Put your trail cam up there to see what your dealing with. A pick of the trap coming down on its neck would be interesting.
 
per said:
Put your trail cam up there to see what your dealing with. A pick of the trap coming down on its neck would be interesting.
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Good idea per! Don't use poison TXT :shock: . If whatever it is eats that poison and crawls down in the wall and dies, it'll be a couple of months before the stench goes away. Down here squirrels will eat hole in the fascia board in the winter, for access to the warmer air in the attic. And our rats can can get big! Use a trap!
 
Well what ever yo do be careful up there those damned rats can git mean and are pretty dang fast,be turrible for one of em to run up your pants leg and you fall thru the ceilin.
I know i dont wanna mess with them again,my damn ribs still hurt,been 3 or 4 months ago :mad:
good luck
 
nmhighdesert said:
we had a couple ringtailed cats in the attic on a camp I lived in AZ a few yrs ago, sounded like the Dallas Cowboys getting a beating up there.
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There was a day when I would have taken exception to that,but not today,the Dallas cowboys died with Tex Shram and Tom Landry.
good luck
 
A good poison with a dessicant in it can work pretty good. It kills them and dries the little fellers up with no stink at all. That being said, I prefer traps, I like a body count.
 
I like the idea of setting up a trail cam, but kinda spooked on what it might capture up there :shock:. I think a friend of mine is coming by later and while here I'm going to use him as back up and also to hoist me up in the attic hole! It don't have a ladder, just a hole barely big enough for me to squeeze through. I'm going to maybe try to get a visual on the beast and see what I'm dealing with, and if nothing else maybe look for some "scat" and see If I can't identify it that way. If you don't hear back from me after today send reinforcements!!! :lol: :P :lol: :P
 
Wamt me tp drive down there and check it out for you, you big baby?
:lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:



I do have to tell yout his story about some of my relatives in Missouri.
They were farmers and years ago they built a new house. They didn't live it in very long when they moved out, telling everyone the house was haunted. They heard creepy things every night, it seems. Well, a travelling salesman came through and needed a place to stay. He inquired about the empty house. He was told he could stay there, but
that the place was haunted. He didn't believe in such things, so it was
no problem for him to stay in the house. Sure enough, first night, he
heard the noises. :shock: It was a moonlight night and he got up to investigate.
What he found was a raccoon with a short piece of chain around his neck.
Apparently the coon was a pet and had gotten away. He lived in the attic and during the night he would go down through the walls of the house and the chain would hit the studs and make the terrible noise the family heard.
Because it was so moonlight, the salesman saw the coon go out into the yard...with the chain still attached to his neck...

GOOD LUCK!!!!! :wink:
 
51P07ND4OkL_BO2204203200_PIsitb-sti.jpg


http://www.amazon.com/Stokes-Guide-Animal-Tracking-Behavior/dp/0316817341
 
ITS RATS!!!! Next chance I get I'll be putting out a trap line for em! I've never had to deal with rats before....I'm assuming this is the slick tailed brown ones. The only rats I've got experience with is the Bushy Tailed Wood Rat or the Pack Rat and once in a while back home our coon hound would tree one up under a car motor and we'd have to go flush him out so the hound would stop barking.
 
Well buddy, in my experience, you'll be a long time trapping them. I always use rat poison and put up with the occasional smell cuz it gets them. Most of the time, we don't get smell and the poison disappears so I know I am getting them.

But then we usually just have mice, although one time I did find a big dead rat on the cellar floor. My lucky day, I guess.

Man I hate rats. They just freak me right out and I'm mighty glad it was you and not me sticking my head up the attic door. I am a grown man, but the sight of a rat can almost make me whimper and snivel like a scared little boy!!

One time I cleaned out a pen that hadn't been cleaned out all winter and there was a sheet of plywood up against the stone wall at one end of the pen. Well it was about half buried in manure and I finally got the manure cleaned away from it.

Well I took hold of that sheet to move it and clean out behind it and when I did all he77 broke loose. The rats had tunneled through the stone wall all winter and built Rat King City behind it and I just opened their front door.

There were more rats than I had ever seen in one place in my life. I grabbed the fork and musta looked like a human helicopter and there were dead rats all over when I was done.

Never so scared in all my life. Man I hate rats.
 
burnt said:
Well buddy, in my experience, you'll be a long time trapping them. I always use rat poison and put up with the occasional smell cuz it gets them. Most of the time, we don't get smell and the poison disappears so I know I am getting them.

But then we usually just have mice, although one time I did find a big dead rat on the cellar floor. My lucky day, I guess.

Man I hate rats. They just freak me right out and I'm mighty glad it was you and not me sticking my head up the attic door. I am a grown man, but the sight of a rat can almost make me whimper and snivel like a scared little boy!!

One time I cleaned out a pen that hadn't been cleaned out all winter and there was a sheet of plywood up against the stone wall at one end of the pen. Well it was about half buried in manure and I finally got the manure cleaned away from it.

Well I took hold of that sheet to move it and clean out behind it and when I did all he77 broke loose. The rats had tunneled through the stone wall all winter and built Rat King City behind it and I just opened their front door.

There were more rats than I had ever seen in one place in my life. I grabbed the fork and musta looked like a human helicopter and there were dead rats all over when I was done.

Never so scared in all my life. Man I hate rats.
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Well thanks for the advice Burnt with the poison, but my only worry with that is that I have 4 dogs that frequent the house and yard. I'm pretty sure I can keep the poison itself in the attic, but what happens if a poisoned rat staggers out in the yard or someplace to die and the dogs get a hold of it? Can the amount of poison that is in the rat that killed it enough to harm a dog? I have Corgi's and they aren't very big dogs.

The dogs and I are fixing to be gone for like 2 weeks in South Dakota for Christmas, so maybe that will be the best time to lay out a poison, and hopefully their little carcasses will be past the smelling stage by then.

Any advice on the best kind to get for rats? Eeek I wonder how many there are...I seen quite a lot of poop and I never even actually got all the way up there!

Oh and I completely understand the phobia......I've got one myself...just not of rats, but nonetheless I can completely understand the situation! Only a person with a true phobia can understand someone elses, otherwise people tend to just think your week or a wimp, but its such a strong force of the mind that can't be controlled.

HAHA....I'd of kinda liked to see you working that pitch fork tho!! :lol:
 
Silver said:
A good poison with a dessicant in it can work pretty good. It kills them and dries the little fellers up with no stink at all. That being said, I prefer traps, I like a body count.
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I kinda like to see a body count to, but I'm not sure if I'm to keen of climbing up this little 2x2 hole to check the traps daily.

What type of poison is laced with this "Desiccant"? Any one with rat troubles have experience with a good poison that works???

I can hear the little bastards up there right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :o
 
Here you go-- 100's of trapping and poison choices: :wink: :lol:

http://www.pestmall.com/rodents-rat-amp-mice.html?gclid=CL-m1oXI1J4CFRlcagodCz3ppg

Don't know about the rats down there- but we used to have them show up off and on at the north place- down in the root cellar under the house...But once you trapped or shot one or two-- they'd all take off and migrate to someone elses place....
 
Well the residual in the dead rat is of concern because one thing I hated about using it in the barn was to find the occasional dead cat or worse yet, the time I found a dead, dessicated barn owl. So, yes your concern is valid.

We always have the best success with a product called Ratak+ from Syngenta.

And as far as seeing me working the fork, you woulda had to be looking pretty quick cuz it was pure adrenalin driving that fork. :devil2:

It was kinda like shooting fish in a barrel because I guess when I cleaned the pen out, the pressure from pushing into the pack with the loader had packed every rat hole shut and they had nowhere to escape!!!

They were just scurrying all over the place and I would nail them as they ran along the walls looking for their holes that had gotten bunged up.:shock: :shock: :shock: Screaming like a banshee all the while . . .

If my memory serves me correctly, I carried out over 20 dead rats after I had landed and settled back down. Shudder emoticon here, Yanuck? Haha.
 
Oldtimer said:
Here you go-- 100's of trapping and poison choices: :wink: :lol:

http://www.pestmall.com/rodents-rat-amp-mice.html?gclid=CL-m1oXI1J4CFRlcagodCz3ppg

Don't know about the rats down there- but we used to have them show up off and on at the north place- down in the root cellar under the house...But once you trapped or shot one or two-- they'd all take off and migrate to someone elses place....
Click to expand...

We were never so lucky as to have them leave voluntarily. But I heard tell that if you catch a live one and singe its fur and let it go, it will scare the others all away.

But I'd put up with a lot of dead rat smell before I would get close enough to one to singe it. Or I would forget that I'm just singeing it and end up with roasted rat . . . . :lol: :lol:

Here's how Martin Jr. does it!!!! He calls in the whole SWAT team!

http://www.ranchers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41038
 

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