Tag Archives: getting rid of rats

Animal in the Wall, Mice, Rat, Rats, Rodent

The Longest Night

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Around this time last year, we had rats in the walls.  I look back on the whole situation and I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t realize it beforehand.  I would find little black pellets both inside my house and on the deck near some gaps in the siding.  Obviously I’m not completely oblivious, I recognized the pellets and feces and assumed it was a small mouse problem so I set out some mouse traps here and there, but never had any success so I assumed the feces I had found was old and that my cat had already killed the culprits.

That was until one night I was enjoying old NCIS reruns, and my TV stopped working.  I tried turning it off and on, and plugging and unplugging it but still nothing; no sound, no static, no anything.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to do so I Googled possible problems.  I came up with a blown fuse, faulty cord or plug, or even a failed power supply; I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that information so I called my neighbor and asked if he’d come take a look.  He came and checked everything he could and said he wasn’t sure why it wouldn’t work, everything seemed perfectly fine and nothing else was down.  I had to wait out the night in radio silence until the cable company could come in the morning.

When they did, I was genuinely surprised at what they had found!  It wasn’t a problem with any of the actual electrical sources, but something had chewed through the cable in the wall that fed to the back of the TV.  After that I called in a Wildlife Technician and they were able to identify my problem: there were rats in the walls.  It took a month or so to get them all trapped and all of the mess they left behind cleaned up, but I was very happy with the outcome.  Now I can sit and watch my shows without any worry of rats chewing up my wires.

Rats

Rat Control

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rat removal

“I’m calling my boyfriend, because he’ll know what to do about rat control!”  Tish, who was normally so sweet, nearly screeched this sentence.  I had come home late from working a long shift at the campus library, and had nothing but a couple of hours of study ahead of me.  But, when I walked in our front door, I nearly tripped over a pile of furniture and various belongings forming a maze throughout the small house we all rented together.

At first, I thought my roomies were playing a practical joke on me.  Last week, three of us had packed up all of Trish’s belongings, including her bedding, and left a note on her bare floor that read, “We’ll miss you.”  She’d walked in, taken one look at the empty room, and burst out laughing.  It was the kind of thing we all did to each other, so it was no wonder that I mistook my roomies’ maze of household items as a practical joke.

And, I have to admit, I didn’t believe them at first when they told me they were doing rat control.  I thought it was more of the joke.

But, when I saw the rat streaking across the room, leaping over the turned-over ironing board and a box that had once held file folders, I just about leaped out of my skin.  Over the course of the next hour and a half, the four of us tried unsuccessfully to perform rat control ourselves, but Trish was right.  It was time to bring in a guy, as much as we hated to admit it.

Once Trish’s boyfriend arrived, he couldn’t stop laughing at my roommates’ maze, and I have to admit, I was a little fuzzy as to why they thought they needed to make a maze.  Apparently, they had discovered a rat in the couch, and built a pathway to the front door, in hopes the rat would leave the couch, follow the path, and go outside.  Unfortunately, after they banged on the couch with a broom, that rat ran out and leaped up and over the walls of the maze.  So, instead of leading the rat safely outside, all the belongings scattered on the floor only served to add to the chaos as we all tripped over things trying to flush out the rat and then run away from it at the same time.

Rat control was not our strong point.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t something Trish’s boyfriend did, either.  I think he only made it worse, by laughing at us and making the rat even more frenzied than before.

After another forty-five minutes of fruitlessly chasing the rat and running away from it, we finally decided we had to call a professional rat control service.  After all, where there is one rat, there may be many more.  And, I didn’t want to live in a rat maze anymore than a rat did.