It is very hard being vegan, raw or otherwise when confonted by.........

[blix]

A RAT:eek: He is up in our attic and has been gnawing away at night for a month now. He doesn't respond to the ultrasonic repeller nor to the humane trap. Nor to the foul smelling wood preserver spray that we used. We have lost a lot of sleep.

[GlimR]

Are you saying that it's hard to not eat animal based foods because you are tired?:confused:

[DavidZaneMason]

Yes. I hear you. TALK directly to the rat - and the intelligence that governs it. Tell it that you understand it needs to live - but must leave to survive. Continue trying to trap it with food traps...then look for the ways it might have gotten in...and patch them. Just some suggestions. If you feel you must, then make a conscious decision to kill....based on YOUR living an even better life...with the life of the rat.

-David Z. Mason

[Bananna]

Yes...I have mice problems...guess that's a little cuter than a rat problem...but anyways...my cats kill them every year. But every year they seem to reenter and the cycle starts all over again. So finding how it got in would be good.
I think there are humane pest removal services out there though...they would just remove it somehow...without killing it?
But yes...I hate to kill even spiders, I always request they be removed instead of killed, however dh doesn't always take my advice and I cant bring myself to do either...anyways, that was a tangent.
A rat. Lovely!!

[goodbeets]

we had problems. we got 2 cats (only needed 1 but they were sisters and sooooooooooo cute). we don't have rat or mice problems anymore!

[blix]

Are you saying that it's hard to not eat animal based foods because you are tired?:confused:

:p :p No, but I don't like killing things. I pick up worms on the road so they don't get run over. No. the film 'Mousehunt' comes to mind. We had a neighbour who couldn't get upstairs, up till last year when he passed away and so he never heard the rat. So we used to wait for the rat to leave in the spring. Now there is a young girl living there whose father breeds geese and kills them for Christmas. I am afraid that he will kill the rat if he hears of it. Rats are too clever for me to kill them. :p I AM SO TIRED.

[kaybee]

yeah, im with you. been veg/vegan for years. HATE the thought of killing anything. i pick up worms and slugs off the road too and relocate slugs from my garden...then they come back and devour my plants.... ended up in a mouse-infested apartment one semester in DC. they were into EVERYTHING. the realtor had assured me before i moved in that it was mouse-free... the landlords got an exterminator who put down sticky traps which are the cruelest thing in the world--said that i had to just pick them up with the living mice screaming on them and throw them away in the trash. i couldnt do it. thats awful. at least the snap traps kill instantly... i ended up going to home depot and getting a heavy pair of gloves and peeling the mice off the traps and letting them go in the alley...then threw all the sticky traps away. AND ended up moving out of the apartment. i just couldnt deal. so i dont have any advice, just solidarity :)

[brydee]

NO!!!
please dont murder it!

Im at the early stages of becoming an animal communicator, i would suggest contacting one and they should be able to get it to move.they've managed to move lots of animals from peoples homes including ants!i could try but iv just come of med's so im taking time to detox and recover before i start again.

The thing with wildlife is that it sees your home as its home, i could offer you help on talking to the rat if you are into that. If you think its a load of codswallop then you will just feel like a fool and gain no insight.

anyway hope you both resolve the problem.Iv heard that rats dont like sage, how about putting some up there?
And another pointer-There is never one rat:(

I know how fustrating it can get, i have 4 geese and the rats decided they wanted to share their house and their food. I had a word with one of them who started getting very cocky and running around my feet. and i havnt seen them since, but they will probably be back this summer.

I think we have to learn to work with the rats, apparently in the uk there is always one no further than 3 metres away from you, whether it be underground, above etc.

[brydee]

Cats dont always help the problem:(

My best ratter died this year.
And my other cat, iv never seen her attempt a rat.

But this is a good option to, least its natural.

[kaybee]

....cats + rats= natural... maybe, but im not sure its the most "humane" option if youre going to kill.... cats often play etc. with their prey first, and the prey may end up dying a slow death... having the cats takes the blame for killing off of ourselves to a certain degree, but it seems snap traps may be much more humane. im not in favor of killing anything--hence all of my mice problems discussed previously... but if someone is going to "exterminate", my understanding is that snap traps are the least painful/suffering way to do it...at least thats what ive been told by people who work at wildlife centers, humane society, etc...

[blix]

I would love to know how to talk to animals. Let me know if you will. Yesterday, Bob took up the floorboards on our landing and in the bathroom and found that the beams run the length of the house, not across, so he can't get further than on the edge of the house. He (Bob) put a block of wood halfway along the run and sprayed it with wood preserver. He put all the boards back again and waited. Last night, 2 rats came in the (extention) lean-to kitchen roof and in through the hole where the beams were put in. They couln't go any further than the block of wood, so we had a reasonable nights sleep. Then we heard them quietly in the attic. Now we have to find how they get up in the attic. We may have to ask our landlord if he could get the holes aroung the beams filled up. Our cottage was built in 1462 so I expect the rats have their own road to our attic, and all the bricks must be soft by now. Our neighbours shoot the rats and our landlord, who breeds pheasants for the shoot, will suggest putting rat poison down to save the cost of dealing with the holes. I mayget another ultra sonic repeller and just leave it there in the attic. If he stays in the extention roof, that is acceptable as long as they don't breed in the attic. They go into the fields in the spring when the seeds are sown anyway, That gives us all summer to deal with the problem.

[buffalogal]

When we had a mouse problem, my husband bought these little "humane" traps at Wal-mart. They are a little plastic see-thru box with a little trap door at one end. You put food (we use peanut butter) into the box. The mouse runs in to get the food and then he can't get back out because the door is a flap that only opens in one direction. Then my husband takes him for a ride about a mile away and releases him. It works great - as long as you check the traps often - don't want the mouse dying a long slow death in the trap!!! It's great for mice - I just don't know if a rat would fit into it though - I guess it depends on how big the rat is!!! Good luck with that rat!!:)

[GlimR]

((blix)))......boy I misread the title of your post~:o
The trap idea is a great one...if you could take it far enough away to not come back. Best of luck~

[blix]

We are surrounded by farms, but there is one particular one with a huge old barn and lots of piles of chicken manure and cattle manure in the fields. It is ten miles away and we plan to take him there when we can catch him. If he doesn't respond to the wire cage, we will disguise it as a small shed with old pine planks and dirt on the floor of it. We have small tins of hedgehog food which we keep for orphan hedgehogs and we have started putting that in the cage.:) Has anyone seen the film 'Mousehunt' It is so funny. but true:p

[GlimR]

Yeah...it was hysterical...manic but hysterical!!!

[Lindazkewl]

Our cottage was built in 1462 so I expect the rats have their own road to our attic, and all the bricks must be soft by now.

1462?? My stars! That's amazing!!!

[Yana]

^^I second that!! May I come over?!?! Please?? Please?? Please?? ;) :D

[GypsiAnsara]

My husband and I CAUGHT 2 young rats this weekend! With a bowl!! We were going to relocate them into the woods, but sadly catching them was too much of a shock and they both died in the little cage I had put them in. They just curled up together like they were sleeping and died. I was very sad, when we were thinking we were doing so much better than putting down poison or traps.
They had just showed up on our porch all of a sudden - no advance warning so we weren't prepared, I suppose getting stuck in a "humane" trap would be easier on them than being chased by a big human with a salad bowl. (It wasn't much of a chase actually. Hmmmm.... maybe they had eaten poison already somewhere??)

Good luck with your own ratty situation. I feel ya!

[blix]

I think what you said about rat poison may be true. One dying on you is a possibility but two? Something slowed them down and it wasn't shock. If they were healthy, you wouldn't have been able to put a salad bowl on them. Don't blame yourself. I looked up sage for rat repellant, I also found that rats hate peppermint, pennyroyal and camomile. I will get some dried camomile and peppermint tomorrow and put it in the attic and the roof of the kitchen. 1/4 lb is supposed to be enough for a garage that fits 200 cars, so the info sheet said. It means that we will have to take a portion of the kitchen ceiling down to put it up there. It really is getting like 'Mousehunt'. I'll let you all know if it works.

[GypsiAnsara]

Aww thanks Blix -I felt like such a big meanie afterwards.
Do you know what is in your attic? When we bought our house, the previous owner insisted she had never seen a rat but turns out had been feeding them "squirrel food" and dog food for years. So there were quite a few living in the attic. We removed all the insulation and put down new, then spent a couple weeks discovering every possible entrance they could use and filling it with sealing foam while keeping traps set up all over the place. It took a while but eventually we got them all out, and it has been over three years now since we've seen one (or 2, as it were!). I think I'll pick up a whole bunch of sage next time we are driving through the desert, and put it up there for good measure.

[blix]

As well as the sage, I am going to buy some cedarwood essential oil and put some Cotton wool in a jam jar lid, cover it with oil and then put 2 or 3 drops of cedarwood oil on that and put 3 of them up in the attic. Then we will take out a small section of our kitchen ceiling and put some up above the ceiling with the camomile and sage. I read that rats hate cedarwood. Then, in the spring, I will plant pennyroyal around the shed and the compost heap as they hate that as well.

NOW, I HAVE TO FIND OUT WHAT TO DO WITH THE BAT THAT WE FOUND HANGING AROUND IN OUR ATTIC LAST NIGHT AS WE CHECKED THE RAT TRAP.! ! :p :p

[kaybee]

i had dried peppermint scattered all over my apartment....on the stove on the counters on the floor in the burners on my shelves...didnt get rid of the mice AND the landlords then said i was "dirty" cuz it looked like there was "dirt" all over; ie the peppermint....

seriously, i hope it works for you. i never found a viable solution; ended up just moving out. of course if it was my own house theres stuff i could have done to block up holes, etc, but it was just a rental.. these things are such a tough situation. stinks for me that the mice just had to end up in MY apartment, the one who didnt want to kill them...

good luck :)

[blix]

THEY'VE GONE. IT WORKED.:) I don't know whether it was the cedar oil or the chamomile, or peppermint, but they are not there anymore, nor are they in the kitchen roof. We stayed awake for one night and last night there was no disturbance at all. I look forward to a good nights sleep now. Thanks for all your advice. You're all wonderful.:) :)