i know mice are repelled by peppermint, not sure if that means rats too, but there is also a small sonic emitter that repels mice that can be plugged into an outlet which doesn't affect humans or other pets
@darkknightt You should get one. 😸 Friend of mine had a rat infestation and spent 15 years trying to get rid of them. His house backed up to the foot hills, so rodents and rabbits were quite numerous. I gave him a cat, he said the problem was solved after 2 weeks.😼
Have passive and active defenses. A passive defence is a sticky trap, or a classical mouse trap along routes they are expected to travel, such as door arches, around garbage, inside of food pantry shelves. A active defence is rat poison, a cat, locating and sealing off rat holes.
Assume they have Interior Lines where they can absolutely exclude you physically from seeing them or interfere with then directly within a wall. The world of their exterior lines are your interior lines. They can go anywhere you can. You need to start making strongholds they can't easily breech, like plastic containers that lock down with hard snaps instead of plastic bags. This was a innovation of the Cycladic Culture of Bronze Age Greece, they figured out putting big heavy lids on their household grain bowls kept critters out.
Reducing their preferred targets for food, you can control and bait them into places that remain and put the poison there. You place the passive traps along the way.
That's the nature of Poliorcetica. Siege warfare, but against rats. You can't keep them out, but you can deny them what they want and lead them to where they cannot possibly survive. It's a war of attrition, a battle to the death.
@UnderLockDown This is my mouse hunter. Sure, she steals my spot in bed and my pillow so I stay up making up random replies at strangers on SW. But shes my tiny little 50lb baby.
Exclusion: seal any holes, etc and keep doors closed
These work great
Rodent baits: be cautious with putting poison down as other things can and will eat it. And poisoned rats get eaten too which means the poison will affect other non target species like birds of prey, cats and dogs, etc
Peppermint oil — Essential plant oils like peppermint, rosemary, citronella, sage and lavender have strong botanical scents that rats dislike. One customer successfully repelled a rat by stuffing a peppermint oil soaked tissue into the rat hole chewed into the wall. The rat appeared to never come back.
There is a rat poison that makes them crave water. They'll leave the house in search of water and die. I had rats in my attic once and I used that and it worked. I just can't think of the name of the poison right now. If you have any pets you don't want them to get access to it. Mine were just in the Attic. You also need to find how they're gaining access to your house and seal those places.
I once read about mixing flour in food that they would eat , or maybe baking soda, which rises and ferments in their belly , or something like that. Look it up on YouTube
Like @nonsensiclesnail said cat also, you can get these glue traps (only if you don't have cats or dogs) flick some peanut butter in the middle of the glue trap and sprinkle some shredded cheese over the center of the peanut butter then put in a corner or under a cabinet where you won't step on it and if you have mice or rats it will be where they can find it.
Getting rid of rats in a house starts with finding out how they gain entry into the house in the first place.
Assuming you don't have any food or trash lying around that will attract rodents, the vast majority of rat and mouse infestation of a house occurs when the rodent gains access to the roof's attic via the roof vents which run across the top of the house.
Usually there's about 6 or 8 roof vents on a shingled roof and around the venting portion of each roof vent there's a mesh screen wrapped to keep bugs out. That screen is usually metal and in time, it will simply rot from it's fixture and fall off, leaving the vent itself as an open-access to the roof's attic.
Mice and rats (called roof rats) will then scale the side of a building in a heartbeat and will enter the attic space through that open roof vent. Once inside the attic, they take up residency and start a colony. As that colony develops, the rats begin to migrate from the attic down to other open spaces in the house, such as by climbing down the interior walls between the drywall and the interior brick surface, thereby entering the basement where the wall meets the concrete basement walls or footings.
Now, you have rats running around in your basement which may end up migrating to other parts of the interior of your home, but they got into the house in the first place via the roof vents on the roof.
The solution: hire a roofing guy to replace the roof vents ..or simply have the roofing guy re-wrap each vent with wire mesh and lock-ties to keep rodents out.
Roof rats (unlike rug rats) are part of the squirrel family, which are also rodents.
