I wish having a few outdoor cats would help but they would not last long with the large numbers of coyotes that roam the wooded creek area owned and controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. Almost every week there is new missing dog or cat signs all over the neighborhood. One thing I know is that they are not “lost” but were probably grabbed by the coyotes or the large owls and hawks. I have seen more wildlife in my own backyard than I usually see out on my grandparents old farmstead.
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any idea what the restrictions are on getting a lynx or a bobcat?
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I like the Tomcat cubes. I use a 10-foot length of PVC pipe to make sure the cube gets over to the soffit , which seems to be Rat Highway 1 at my house.
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Try walnuts twist tied to your snap traps. The rats get smart and will leave the peanut butter alone after awhile. I’ve had good success with the walnuts.
That was funny watching that monster jump up on that rafter…I think it mooned the camera too! 
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Getting a permit for an exotic animal should be fun. Also trying to contain it to the satisfaction of your neighbors and municipality while keeping it useful as an exterminator.
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If there’s coyotes about, just leave a tub O Chow on your porch; eventually a kitty’ll be the perchance visitor…
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Yes, good idea on the water for rats and other rodents. They will chew through irrigation. Sometimes when I put in a drip system I put in a couple of drippers into some pans for these animals so they don’t chew the pipes.
Yeah – the vegetation they put down the middle of Central Expressway died because the rats gnawed through the drip system that was supposed to water it.
Hey, former pest control guy here. I used to give out my current cell number and we offered a lifetime warranty on our work, I’ve never been called since I stopped doing it half a decade ago.
The best traps are the good old fashioned snap traps with peanut butter. I don’t like poison and it’s really completely unnecessary. Rats are weary of anything that looks abnormal and man made but that’s easily defeated when they are hungry. Rats will often go out for food bypassing baited traps, the actual issue and the reason they are occupying your interior spaces is because the door is wide open.
After you bait and set your traps you need to seal up anywhere the rats can go in or out. We used a combination of hardware cloth, staples, self tappers and foam. Common areas are were soffits meet up to the shingles, dryer vents and general poor construction/dilapidation. Once the rats are sealed in, they will get hungry enough they will get into the traps despite their better judgement. If it’s just a few rats you can get rid of them in a week, every 2 days the traps should be checked and reset, if there are enough rats, the rats in the traps become food.
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What you really need is more snakes …
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If you’re going to use snap traps, bait them and set them out for a week along the rats movement corridors, but do not set the traps (always next to walls if they can help it - rats are nearly blind). After a week or so of feeding them, bait them and set them all. The next day, you’ll bring in a haul.
Josh is right, no trap will help until you block off their entry points.
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There were two very obvious access points that I found & sealed up several years ago. There is at least one left that I cannot identify for the life of me, nor were the two ‘professionals’, who were paid a couple of hundred each to do the job, able to (even though they said they had).
I believe that one way or another they are making their way into the chimney, or at the least wall area at/near where chimney is exposed to the attic. How they are getting remains a mystery despite all efforts to figure out their entry point(s). Probably just one left, in all likelihood…just need to identify it somehow.
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It is amazing how small a hole they can squeeze through.
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It’s also amazing how well they climb & jump.
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If they can fit their skulls through, the rest can follow thanks to a cleverly collapsing ribcage that let’s them practically flow through an opening.
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Re getting in
One of our major access points turned out to be where the brick of our house met the foundation, near a corner on our back porch (we watched traffic when we scattered some birdseed since we knew they were in the garden too…neighborhood cats had us on their route, just not enough of them).
Anyway, where a brick corner met at our back porch, up under the overhang of it, some concrete was missing and there is (was!) a hole that became the rat superhighway into our walls and up into the attic. We would have never ever seen it since it’s not clear unless you stoop down and really look along edge of brick/foundation since it was shadowed by overhang. It’s very clear now that we know what to look for and not hard to see. Might be worth checking.
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If you want me to come take a look someone, I probably could, the only thing I ask is that you cover my gas.
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Yes…too all this. In fact if one didn’t see it for themselves, e.g. the ways they can get in and avoid trapping and the acrobatics/gymnastics/contortions it would be very hard to believe. Of course that’s what makes it so hard to locate ingress points…you have to eyeball pretty much every square inch of the houses from 360 degrees.
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Of course, I’d be very grateful for the expertise! And I’d hope to be able to make it more reasonably worth your while. I’ll send a PM.
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Dunno if it’ll work for rats, but when I was in OH, we had raccoons, groundhogs, and squirrels. Best thing we found was a bowl of strawberries with fly-bait on them. It’s essentially 100% nicotine… a light sprinkle of the stuff on the strawberries was enough to give any animal about 5 steps before their system shut down. Sounds bad, but was quick and painless apparently.
be aware, it’ll kill anything that eats it though, so keep it away from pets and kids of course!
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