Rats!!

H

harry

At the Start
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Apr 16, 2005
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looked out of my window today and saw a huge rat run across the road!!!

Went outside wife kids to see it and it ran through loads of gardens and in the end quite a few people were watching it....horrible thing

Have never saw a wild one before and now I want to move:(
 
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They're all around. You're just not in the habit of seeing them. No reason to move. Mind you, it is highly unusual to see them run around in the open. It was probably just trying to get on Goldikova at 100/30.
 
An average large town or smallish city will have around 250,000 rats. Big cities - at least a million. There's nothing particularly bad about seeing one - if your Council's done any drains work, they've been disturbed and are probably just hunting for a new home. They're largely nocturnal around housing, so yours probably had been disturbed.
 
We had a horrendous rat infestation a few years ago - my OH shot about 250 of them - they were everywhere in the yard. You'd put the horse feed in and about 15 would jump out. Hideous! - and the landlord refused to sort it out (no suprise there!). It was just before we moved and after we left, with no horse feed to eat, they all moved into the landlords' lads hostel whereupon the lads demanded immediate action or they moved out!

We have the odd rat here but they are dealt with straight away either using a rat trap or we let the dogs after them - my greyhound is pretty quick dispatching them.
 
Start getting used to seeing even more about, guys, as there's a EU directive about not using rat poison to kill them on 'humane' grounds about to hit the sgtatute books... It was met with coonsiderable 'interest' on the farming forum I belong to and will be another opportunity for us farming folk to break the law again!:cool:
 
When the ratcatcher visited our local pub,he caught 87 rats . Including 4 in a fallen drainpipe underneath the bench we sat on outside every Summer when it was warm enough.
 
The problem with using poison in urban areas is that you cannot be sure that kids won't somehow find it and play with it, or that it won't kill pets. The Council here used traps to remove one of the two that I saw coming from the back of shops, a few feet from our flats. The other one escaped but was poisoned by the shopkeeper (who later admitted putting out poisoned food) and... this bit is definitely not for Harry's squeamish eyes! ...

Our flats' manageress was talking with the caretaker and one of the housing reps about rats getting into the building, when something fell onto the caretaker's bald head. Then something else, and something else... they were squirming maggots. The manageress, not imagining what might happen next, pushed the ceiling tile above him, and down fell the rotting corpse of the poisoned rat, accompanied by a battalion of feasting maggots. That's the prob with poisoning, much as it's the lazy way to do things - the dying rat seeks a sheltered spot in which to expire. In this case, in our flats. Better to trap 'n' despatch, set dogs on (I thought that was one of their purposes on farms?), or shoot. However, where they are in huge numbers in urban areas, allowing people to potshot them or send dogs flying around streets just mightn't be the best solution.
 
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGH! Bloody hell, that's horrible!

Can't abide rats. Spiders, snakes, no problem but rats ...

When I worked in stables many moons ago, I used to hate my turn at watering and locking up, especially in the winter. The loose boxes were in a very old building with a door between the two furthest boxes, with a ledge above the door. I used to hear the rats scuttling along the ledge above my head. Everyone used to laugh because I used to go and lock up with my jeans tucked in my boots, and the hood of my jacket up.

I used to take the dogs with me at first, but found it much easier on the nerves without them flushing the rats out.

One night every box I went into had a rat or two. I kicked a lump of straw back into place and a rat shot out and ran over my foot.

I don't do screams and hysterics - unless they get very close, then it's the classic stand on the chair bit.

Redhead II doesn't mind rats and actually found one in her bath a few years ago. She spent a merry 20 minutes trying to catch it in a Tupperware box while it skittered up and down the slippery walls of the bath, squeaking loudly in fright.

I think I would probably have passed out at that point.
 
They are very good swimmers, Dessie!

No, I would not have been rational enough by that point to have even thought of that.
 
"I saw one as big as a small dog"... you mean you're worried by something the size of a chihuahua, Granger?

They got a bad rap with the little issue of bubonic plague, but obviously the root cause of that was the filth in which humans lived at the time - and, in many places in the world, still do today. We say pigs are filthy, but we like to eat them, and shellfish, which Jewish people eschew because of their frequently disgusting feeding habits. Each to their own - rats are no worse than the other carriers of diseases: canines, cats, badgers, birds, slugs and snails, mosquitoes, humans...
 
I posted on another forum asking about two rats found in my garden, which looked domestic but I was not sure. One was pure white the other pale brown. Both rarher small and out only in daylight. Also rather tame.

General consensus was that they were escaped or abandoned pets.

I don't mind them. My sister had pet rats who were very clean and smart. However wild rats are scary and I admit that faced with a lot of them I would probably get the gun out, or better yet my friends terriers.

Turns out the rats in my garden were indeed abandoned pets. They have been living in next doors summer house, between the floors, because they work for Spillers (my neighbours, not the rats) and store the free horsefeed they get for their horses in the summer house. The rats have been there for about a year, even through the snow. The school behind us had a 'show and tell' with pets and the rats were shown. A short time after they appeared in the gardens, having been turfed out by the bored child. :(

I used to count rats when I had a 2 hour commute, and many train changes, to and from London ..... big hairy brown beasties running along the train rails.
 
krizon said:
...and shellfish, which Jewish people eschew because of their frequently disgusting feeding habits...
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I thought Jews ate quite properly.

Back to the rats.

I remember having to spend the night in a Barcelona train station, the biggish one near the port. No sooner had I sat on a bench and got my feet up on my case than a number of rats appeared as if from nowhere and started scurrying around. I had nowhere to go and my ancient big old case was very heavy and only had a handle (no wheels or anything like that - I think it dated back to the 1950s). I just had to sit there and hope for the best. I didn't sleep a wink that night.
 
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walsworth said:
They have never scared me, I just think they are another animal with babies to feed, they won't hurt you if you don't hurt them.
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I would never hurt one, Walsy, like you I prefer to let them alone - but I really get quite twitchy if one gets too close.

The only time I have ever "harmed" a rat was when one of the dogs broke a rat's back and it was screaming with pain and fear, dragging its back legs. I actually asked its forgiveness as I whacked it hard with a large, heavy shovel - and even cried over it. How soft-hearted is that?
 
That was a very humane gesture, Red - not a nice thing to have to do, although I realise a lot of people wouldn't give a, er, rat's ass about it!

It's no wonder we're never further than a couple of feet from rats in cities - just got in from a fairly extensive walk around town with an ex-Brighton chum of mine and I'm disgusted with the state of the place. There's human pee and sick in the streets, wheelies overflowing outside restaurants, and general litter and muck everywhere. Okay, it's the Bank Holiday and we get around 200,000 visitors over the long weekend, but there's no excuse for the unwashed pavements, the weeds, the litter, and the overall tattiness of major buildings, many owned by big international companies which have the money to clean the outside. Costa Coffee - two or three grubby tables outside, the pavement around them littered with cigarette butts. Yuk. Don't blame rats, or pigeons, or cockroaches - blame humans for liking to besport themselves in their own mess.
 
Agreed. Two years ago Cheltenham high street was voted the filthiest main street in the Midlands.

Recently it was voted the cleanest because the judges were daft enough to give notice of their arrival and the place was scrubbed up, only to revert as soon as it was done.

Like Brighton, the pavements are unwashed, stained with sick, pee and thrown away food from the various takeaway outlets. Even more distasteful I find is the number of cafes in town who put tables outside as if it is a treat to drink or eat on such a filthy walkway.

One of the reasons for dirty pavements is that so many of the street cleaners don't actually use the brooms that are provided and just content themselves with using the long-reach arm to pick things up - even cigarette butts.

I used to start work very early a few years ago and only saw one chap using a broom during the 2 years that I used to walk through the town. His patch was a marked contrast to everywhere else.

No wonder there are rats everywhere. Cheltenham High Street stinks of rotten food on a hot day, because a certain (major) food outlet never sweeps the spillage from broken bags that go out with the bins.

Just using a broom would remove much of the staining from the pavement and a lot of the foodstufs that can't be picked up with a "grabber", as that one chap in the Promenade proved.
 
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