Help please, predator/fencing

[dawnjoennikki98]

I'm having a stressful day today. I was planning on having a tight chain link fence installed, with chainlink over the top also for the duck run. Then cover at least halfway up, and 2 feet underground hardware cloth....but then today, horrors of horrors, a RAT came running out towards the ducks from the ivy! I've never seen a rat here in the 30 years i've lived here... The ducks chased him, and he ran into their temporary run , which i had just let them out of. so I shut the door, and i'm thinking yes, now he's trapped!! but NO, he climbed up 3 feet of 1/4 inch hardware cloth and squeezed out the top in about 1/2 a second !!!! what am i going to do now??? will putting the cloth on the inside of fence help at all?
i wanted to have their run done a long time ago, but my plan of building it myself just hasn't worked out... We have racoons, coyote, hawks, rats apparently, foxes, muskrats, possums, and i want to protect them of course!

Dawn

 

[Dances with Ducks]

Its not clear to me how you are saying the rat got through, did it escape through a break between pieces of hardware cloth? It seems like you need to have the run completely enclosed with hardware cloth. Are you asking for a good way to connect pieces of hardware cloth? What about overlapping pieces wired together?

 

[dawnjoennikki98]

Yes, thank you, it looks like this may be very expensive!