Rats

[Joe]

So a quick update, it appears there was not a hole on the outside of the property, instead the rat got into the house when the back door was left lying open. It then hid for weeks (at least) and built up a food supply and at the same time it had chewed through a wall and into the cavity.
The issue appears to be resolved now, it was trapped in the cavity and poison was pushed through and it died about three days later.
Tomorrow I will be removing the temporary block into the cavity and cementing it up. I suspect in a week or so the smell will hit for a few weeks but I didn't have many options at the time.
My big concern was a large family of rats with the potential to increase to hundreds.
The down side was having to kill the rats, I had started to like it over the last week when it had out smarted me every time and if I had known it was only one rat I would have trapped it and let it go in a far off forest. I'm not sure if every rat was as smart as this one but it was probably the most intelligent animal I have came across.
If anyone ends up with this issue then don't mess around, take the kitchen apart, remove the cupboards if required and track it down. You won't trap it or poison it as it will has food hidden everywhere. You even need to check inside Washing Machines,Freezers etc. incase it's hidding inside or has chewed electrical wiring.
Once the hidden food is found you might have half a chance.

[bigpaul]

we had a mouse got into the house by climbing up the outside of the sewer pipe into the bathroom, there was enough of a hole around the pipe for a mouse to squeeze through, thats been repaired so no hole now, that was a couple of years ago and no repeat.

[Joe]

BP that’s the big issue, mice and rats can get in just about anywhere and based on my experience they are harder to detect than most people think. I would definitely recommend taking the kick boards off regularly and also pulling out appliances.
There’s definitely two stages to this game,
1. Trying to maintain the rat population around your property to almost zero.
2. Keeping your home unfriendly to rats, so secure entry points and don’t have food available.

We failed entirely with having food lying around eg dog and rabbit treats.

[Joe]

Well a quick update on the rat saga.
It’s pretty obvious it’s died in the cavity, we are running the extractor fan constantly and you can still smell it. We have wrote the kitchen off for the moment and eating out. I suspect we could have a month of this but we didn’t have many options at the time.

[bigpaul]

(18 June 2022, 10:17)Joe Wrote: BP that’s the big issue, mice and rats can get in just about anywhere and based on my experience they are harder to detect than most people think. I would definitely recommend taking the kick boards off regularly and also pulling out appliances.
There’s definitely two stages to this game,
1. Trying to maintain the rat population around your property to almost zero.
2. Keeping your home unfriendly to rats, so secure entry points and don’t have food available.

We failed entirely with having food lying around eg dog and rabbit treats.

the worst thing is putting fat balls out for the birds, that draws the rats into the garden, needless to say we havent put these out for years but other people do.
the local cats are too lazy.

[bigpaul]

no sign of Rats for 2 days so hopefully they all ingested the poison we put out.

[Joe]

Doubtful BP, the rats are clever and will look around the area for a safe food source. Unless you can remove all food sources then they won’t eat it.
I have a bait box sitting outside and there’s signs the rats have investigated it but they haven’t touched the food. My next task is to remove the clutter from around the property as anything lying around is a potential home for them.

So over a week later the smell has went from extreme to bearable, trust me you don’t want a rat dying in the wall cavity. I have left the hole open in order to vent the smell into the kitchen so it can be cleared by the extractor fan. The plan now is to cement up the hole and hopefully it won’t seep into other areas.
To summarise, if you find a rat problem then time is key, don’t think you can fix it with traps and poison, be prepared to rip the place apart.
I will post a link later to an excellent You Tube channel which will help.

[Joe]

https://m.youtube.com/c/TheTwinHomeExpertsLA

[Joe]

The link to the Twins channel is a great source of info, granted they tend to deal with extreme cases but if you ignore a rat problem it can be extreme pretty quick. Remember they are pregnant for 22 days and have 8 to 10 babies so you can imagine the situation after 2-3 months. And remember before you are even aware they are there you could be easily looking at one month or more.
My rat was walking past two dogs and they didn’t even respond so that’s how quiet they are.

[bigpaul]

no rats here for about a week so the poison must have worked either that or the local cats had them.