I recently asked you, dear readers, about dealing with rats, having recently Tweeted about it. The viewings of the Tweet have increased since I last mentioned it but there has still not been one comment.
Even you, dear readers, haven’t jumped in calling for the death penalty for rats or calling for mercy and expounding on the intelligence of rats, as discussed in scientific journals.
Under the circumstances, without any other advice on the matter, I decided to take the matter into my own hands. Especially after they gnawed through cabling in the garage; shredded a plastic bag in the potting shed which contained soil; and to put the tin hat on it they got up onto my workbench and chewed into two boxes of wildflower seeds mixed with a sort of sawdust to allow you to broadcast it.
I decided enough was enough and looked up ways to get rid of rats.
I immediately rejected forking out big money for a “humane” cage trap, which would then involve me taking the rat, or rats, for a ride into the country before loosing them in a woodland glade.
In fact I considered that to be the least humane way to deal with them.
Imagine taking a city dealer up to the Highlands of Scotland and letting him loose, no phone, no laptop, no coffee machine, no secretary to run errands. It would be kinder to put a bullet in his brain and free him of that misery.
That means looking for the most humane and quickest form of death.
Poison was ruled out straightaway.
After all these poisons are normally designed to cause a slow death allowing the rat to get back to its nest before dying in absolute agony. I am not that cruel – anyway think of the smell and having to find out where the nest was which contained the rotting corpse.
This really left me with only one alternative.
An old-fashioned, spring-loaded, baited trap.
Not one of these fiddly little wooden and wire traps you see in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
No, the one I ordered had a strong steel bar and solid plastic construction which would go on for years, just in case a future generation of rats decided to nest in the Garage of Death.
They arrived within 24 hours, and as well as two sturdy traps there was a syringe of bait attractant which is apparently irresistible to rats.
The first night I put bait in the traps but did not set them.
Next morning the traps had moved and the bait was gone.
I did the same for the next two nights and then, on the fateful night, I set both traps and the following morning one had been triggered and the plastic-coated steel bar had come clean down on the neck of the medium-sized rat.
Careful to use gloves, I opened the trap over a strong plastic bin bag, rolled the whole thing up and put it in the bin.
The next night I set both traps again and this time I was greeted in the morning by not one, but two rats. One was the same size as the previous night but the second one was more of the size of rat you see in documentaries about life in the sewers.
They were treated to the same plastic shroud as their predecessor.
That night I set a trap in the garage and also one in the shed.
Next day the shed trap had a corpse in it but the garage was still set.
I didn’t jump the gun and declare the place rat-free and for the next few nights, in fact most of the week, I set the traps in garage and shed but there were no further corpses.
Job done and they will have gone to the rat Valhalla.
I do not seek praise, I have not cleared the town of rats like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, just dealt with my problem.
If any of you condemn me for my actions, well I’ll have to live with it.
I do not enjoy taking life but sometimes it is the only, and final, solution.
Robin's Nest 