nov 6 2022

I am by no means a rat expert... But I have noted some interesting rat behaviors.  our second infestation started  in sept 2021 with a lightning bolt... which struck in our neighborhood.. and in the confusion,  a collection of trash was located... which was removed by six or seven huge dumpsters... I lost count.

I  really didn't think too much about it --- Till the 1st thing to go was my Toyota Sequoia.. which  my ins insurance co  deemed 100% total because rats ate the wires..  I had read about soy based wires in Toyotas.. but that really didn't ringing too many bells until the Rav 4 Toyota which was also  parked in the vicinity of that lightning strike/trash    was also deemed 100% total. because of rats.  interestingly the toyotas parked near the barn did not have chewed . wires... for whatever reason.

 

as the two cars were towed out of here the rats then moved into the house..  and I started to really pay attention when  one ran across my bed at night.  this resulted in two things.. I vowed I would not eat crackers in bed again... and I bought all the victor rat traps available in tractor supply, the Essex coop. And then ordered 84 more traps which I billed  with Amazon..By October I probably had 100 victor rat traps and started in. with some of the things I learned in the past 20 years.  Namely. Do not underestimate the IQ of a rat.

 

Now if anyone would like to question my experience with those traps,,, I can bait and set one in a matter of seconds—swiftly and safely.----- I have found... so far.... an old refrigerator has been used  used to store dog food... and the rats have not been able to get in it. And the stainless steel “closet”. .  looks good !

Another “we have not begun to understand what a rat will eat”....  I have not done any blind testing of this, but  we came to 4 totally empty boxes which had contained RIDX and had the usual chewed rat hole.. it would be great to. find they are addicted to RIDX ... I hope someone tests  that... I don’t seem to have any rats in the. House now.    But winter is coming....

 

 

Two months later, by actual count, I had 20 rat traps left.   Because I throw out the trap with the dead rat, because I think I have observed they don't like reused...  maybe they can sniff death I don't know..  this would mean that I threw out somewhere between 64 and 80 dead rats with their trap.

 

Somewhere here I went to ira Toyota in Danvers..  and I asked the very nice service manager if he had some of that hose that was often used to get exhaust fumes out under a garage door..  and yes he had some they weren't using I could have..

so armed with the hose I backed the tractor into the alleyway of the barn because my car didn't fit..  and shove that exhaust hose down a very tidy rat hole in one of the horse stalls. I don't know what the effect was but we seem to have fewer rats after that episode..  so I took that same hose from one end of my Toyota and stuck the other end up in the engine compartment.

I don't know what that did either except my current forerunner it's still working very nicely....

 

Because we have 7 cameras on our farm which can be seen world wide as part of the “never stop learning” of Explore.org.... someone in Ohio contacted the Ipswich board of health to tell them we had rats in our house next thing that happened was five cars come up the driveway and parked in a row and the people in those cars went through our entire farm including the barn the kennels- the house .  one of the people suggested we use poison to get rid of the rats... he didn't know if that would affect the dogs or not but he said “the dogs are very big it probably wouldn't hurt them.”  no dog deserves that treatment... especially my Danes who cost me $30,000 to raise so that I can donate them free of charge to people with handicaps.. he was going to take a chance.. not bloody likely.

I then got a call from the town hall someone that I know.. said “I hear you don't make your bed” . I am sure that somehow it would be deemed very legal for the Board of Health to come in and clean up anything that needed cleaning up..

because as they said to me “we saw rat feces --and where there's rat feces there are rats” which isn't quite true.. it certainly indicates where rats had been.... and we had not vacuumed them up yet. .

 

we were ordered to hire an extermination company--so we did that---and they come on a regular basis--and present their bill on a regular basis--- last time I looked in their collection bucket---I saw one rat, one squirrel, and innumerable chipmunks.—

 

I hoped that was the squirrel that had been storing his nuts between the clean sheets in my guest room.  life on a farm is different.