Rats.

I have had good luck with poisoning rats with bait sticks rather than pellet type poisons. I seek out thier tunnels and place a bait stick in it. Then I bury the entrance. The rats then need to either dig around the bait stick or try to chew thier way through it. Chances are that they will try to chew on it a bit before trying to dig around it. The bait sticks are also too big for your birds to eat or even peck at.
Buried in thier hole is a perfect meal for them and your other pets are safe from accidental poisoning. This worked well for me.

Thanks, I haven't tried that yet. I guess I would have to snake through the wood pile and put some in through the gaps and stuff. Recently we've moved the wood around and have found their nests. Thanks.

Your overrun with rats. Plain and simple and there is no way your getting the numbers down without poison. There are those that use proven methods of keeping numbers down without poison but then rodents get out of hand they do indeed use it to get the numbers down again. I skip all that and just use poison.

Do I have pets? Yes.
Have I ever inadvertantly killed an animal other than rodent? No.
In the 4 years of using poison 24/7 how many dead rodents have I witnessed on the ground not in a hole? Two. Fist thing in morning and put them in trash.

Pellet poison will get strewn about and becomes indiscriminant. Chunx bait poison in a tamper proof bait box targets your quarry and contains the poison to the box or rodents mouth and to it's young in their nests. It's that easy. I leave one bait box right in the run at all times. Other is put in shed where feed is stored or on side of house closest to coop.

A box like this that takes a key. You'll find them local so don't need to over pay for shipping like these, try your local feed store:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Protecta-LP...hash=item1e5533eda4:m:mhhVWTpsee-S-WWdtWZ_Ocg

And a pail of chunx poison like this you'll find at feed store too:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tomcat-Bait...641657?hash=item211a44ddf9:g:cJAAAOSwal5YIqee

No more rodents, no headache, no hassle and most of all no worries your poisoning the world...nope just rodents which includes squirrels and chipmunks.None of these you want getting into yours or your neighbors house.

Drowning rodents takes more than leaving pails of water out. Floating seed to look like a firm floor works well but in all honesty it's only prolonging the inevitable use of poison or living with rats. If many rodents are drowning without hiding the water under seed then your far overrun. If you see rats in daytime, your overrun. If....overrun, overrun....far too many are overrun. One hole seen is over 20 rats, three holes is over 100....it's easy to get overrun.