I hate rats
I hate rats a LOT!!
Moms house is old, over 100 years. Dad was a landscape architect-he liked big fruit trees and vines........lots of trees and vines growing on an old house
My dad was a "collector" of old stuff, it all had a useful purpose some time.......He had the demo wood from the past 30-40 years sitting in piles in the "garden"
The chicken house was anything but rat proof and Mom would leave the lid up on the chicken food bin all night
The Elderly lady across the street had Alzheimer's but her kids did not want to put her in a home-or take her to their home, so they would buy her a roasted chicken 2x a week. She would put the chickens in her garden, well...tuck them in her hedge.
That my friends is is how you too can breed hundreds of rats!
Mom used to keep a calender where she tracked the number of rats caught and killed a day (in the house and outside) She stopped using poison after killing a cat.
I think I have spent a big part of the past 7-8 years cleaning up their lot and making sure that rats did NOT feel welcome! I have had them drop out of vines and bushes as I cut and trimmed them off the house and away from the chickens. One wood pile I stopped counting rats at 75 as I pulled the old wood out, a flashlight at night in the old coop was scary-all those eyes looking back at you. And eeewww they were even running in the trees.
I HATE rats!
The piles are gone, the old coop gone, new one super rat proof, no feed out, elderly neighbor passed and new people bought the house and trimmed the hedge.
But we still have a determined rat or two...............
My bf was helping with a crew of guys fixing a problem at her place, we had them for another 30-45 minutes and asked if they would help dig up a few bushes/tree stumps. The guys had made some...well guy comments about my rear while I was helping moving stuff (he understood their Spanish...lol)
Anyway, one had just made another comment quietly when a rat popped his head up from a void in the retaining wall. They guys were yelling about the rat-jumping all over the place as it ran around and then back down the void in the wall, I grabbed a chainlink fence post and pounded that rat to bits..................the crew of guys just stood there with their mouths open............
lol