I live in West Portland and have found evidence of rats in my wood piles, under my shed, under my deck, and bordering on the other side of my neighbors fence. Any ideas how to kill off these pests and not kill my dogs with poison or what ever? Night vision and 22 air rifle will not work but end up having my snowflake neighbors calling the police on me. I think there are a lot of rats in the back yard. The yard is completely fenced in with wood fence and chain linked.
Can I use D-Con protected in a housing so dogs can not get but the dead rats would die in the backyard???
Any ideas?
you cant use poison if you have pets that can find the dead mice or the poison. You don't want to poison rats anyways cause they crawl off and die where you can never reach them but they will stink for months.
The only way is to use a live trap or those large spring traps, you can set spring traps in a location that pets cant get to. Ive had equal success with both but found that one rat might never take to a spring trap but will the other so get both. Typically that rat is one that escaped a close call once, usually they get thumped from a spring trap and will never approach those again so I ended up having to buy a live trap, If they trip the live trap but escape they will try it again. Its common for mice/rats to escape with the bait but not set off the spring trap or even pull out fast enough. Some spring traps Ive had to tweek the trigger with pliers to make more sensitive. Rats are smart and will avoid the traps at first, be patient with either trap it does take them a while for them to get used to maybe a week sometimes. The best bait you can use is peanut butter but in a pinch most any food scrap can work.
note: with live traps its difficult to get them out live without them getting away, if you have a pellet gun you can finish them off point blank inside the trap in your garage where your snowflake neighbors cant hear the gun. Put a dab of peanut butter on the muzzle if you have to.
Caught this guy on his third visit to the trap. Even caught he still ate the massive scoop of peanut butter on the trigger plate...