A Better Rat Trap

[Wood Pigeon]

It was necessary to install rat traps on my ground-level balcony, as sometimes my wood pigeons fight up on top of my pergola, at the feed dish, and it 'rains' dried feed corn and sunflower seed. The little birds, and wood peckers, gleefully nibble away at the hanging cage of beef-suet, peanut, and oat balls there, causing crumbs all over the balcony deck.

So rats have been a problem now and then, and I bring the feeding arrangements in at dusk, and set them back a half hour before sunrise.
Sweeping up, plus washing down the deck with hot water also helps a lot.

But again rats at night! So I bought traps, and then saw somebody in internet who builds a protective house for his traps. They also only allow the rat to enter from the front, and not steal the bait from the side.

I only had a few hours before dark, so I built two such rat houses out of particle board scraps. Not my best carpentry, but time was pressing.


Trap with white safety rod inserted though the sides.

The trap is drilled in two places, and then screwed down to the floor. So by setting, it can not tip forward and injure you.

The house is also drilled from the sides, so a protective 'safety rod' is pushed all the way through to hold down the kill bar and trip rod, until you can set the yellow plastic bait-holder.


This old peanut butter had turned to 'glue'. Yuck!

It also allows you to safely carry the armed house outside, without it tripping, because the safety rod prevents that. Once in position, the safety rod is pulled out, and it is set to go. In the morning, if empty, the rod is reinserted to safely carry the house indoors for storage.

I bait them with cheap lunch meat and peanut butter, plus I throw a handful of fresh feed corn and sunflower seed in the rear. That doubles the chance a rat may enter the house.

The hinged roof of the house needs to be high enough to allow the trip rod to fly up without hitting anything.

Unarmed house: First you set the trip rod standing up in a corner, then carefully pull back the kill bar, but hold it firmly down in the rear corner with a solid stick. Then flip the trip rod over the kill bar and insert the safety rod in through the side, which holds the two down. Now you can safely bait it and set the end of the trip rod into the yellow plastic thing.

But do always be careful around rat traps! I just about broke my thumb measuring the height of the activated kill bar. Ouch!!!

 

[John Brown]

Have you had much success?

 

[Wood Pigeon]

Have you had much success?

I caught one Norwegian Brown Rat the first night, about 03:00 AM the next morning.

I have three 45 litre containers on my ground-level balcony, within my bamboo and wood-grid pergola for my berry brambles planted there (Willamette, and Autumn Bliss raspberries, plus Black Satin, and Chester blackberries). But my bird feeders are also inside and on top of the pergola, quite a rat attraction really.

Anyway, the rats had been climbing our aluminium balcony skirting at night, and burrowed deep holes into each berry container, all the way to the bottoms! Maybe they wanted to over-winter there, while enjoying falling feed corn, sunflower seed, or suet crumbs.

So I flooded each container with at least 20 litres of water, but they kept coming back again, until I set my two rat houses across the containers.

But 'word must have gotten around', or the right species of owls, or hawks, as we have not heard anymore climbing, dashing about, nor observed or killed any more of them.

Peace at last!

 

[Steve Maskery]

We have moulos. I think they are the same as Field Mice. Beautiful animals, actually, much bigger than mice (perhaps 200mm long plus a tail the same length) but they live in the walls, eat the insulation (such as it is), come out at night , eat anything they can get their teeth into and poop in the larder. Now we don't keep anything in the larder unless it is in tins or bottles.
I've set many a trap where they have simply taken the bait and moved on.
S

 

[Wood Pigeon]

We have moulos. I think they are the same as Field Mice. Beautiful animals, actually, much bigger than mice (perhaps 200mm long plus a tail the same length) but they live in the walls, eat the insulation (such as it is), come out at night , eat anything they can get their teeth into and poop in the larder. Now we don't keep anything in the larder unless it is in tins or bottles.
I've set many a trap where they have simply taken the bait and moved on.
S

Then is this one?