Rats have been with mankind since the beginning of time. We are told that no one is further from a rat than six feet, at any given time. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, however there are plenty of rats around.

There are apparently 60 species of rats in the world. The smallest is about four inches long and the largest is called the Bosavi woolly rat which weighs over three pounds, about the size of a cat.

Rats are not your “simple” little animal, they are very intelligent. This is shown by the fact that they are used to sniff out gunpowder and are highly intelligent at solving puzzles and can navigate mazes.

17 species of rats are known to transmit fatal diseases to mankind: Weal’s disease, plague, viral haemorrhagic fever and Q fever. Rats do not sleep much and most of their activity takes place during the hours of darkness. .

Apart from me, the enemy rats are many; cats, foxes, dogs, snakes, large birds such as hawks, sparrowhawks, kites and, of course, the owl.

I have no experience in catching rats in a house, because to my knowledge I have never lived in a house with rats. However, my sister, who lives in Washington, had a neighbor who had a stray python in the house that lived on rats. You could try that if you want, I’d rather not because I might as well eat you one day.

My serious rat hunting days began three years ago (2017) when rats ate all my beet and apple crops on my allotment. I knew they were around because I used to see them run from time to time. I didn’t think of that, just a few rats. How wrong I was:

2018 i fucked 53

2019 i caught 84

One night in 2019 I caught two young men in a trap (blades, right?). I also caught a very large slug.

This year, 2020, I have only caught two so far. The reason, I think, is that my plot was flooded for almost two months earlier in the year and they either drowned or moved out for the time being, however I saw one the other day. They are back, but so am I.

So how do I catch them? Well, first of all, I don’t use any kind of poison. I think that is not safe and it takes three to four days for the rat to die. When you poison a rat, it will hide somewhere and die, and then there is a chance that something will come and eat it and that animal will die too. So by using poison, you lose control of what happens and you could be responsible for two or three very painful deaths.

I use rat traps, the wooden ones, not the plastic ones because they break in the sun. The bait I use is peanut butter, it seems better to me because the rat has to spend some time under the spring licking the bait. I always wear gloves when handling the traps, the reason is to keep my scent out of the trap.

Rats, like us, are highly focused, but also like us, they are creatures of habit. I take advantage of that fact in the following way.

I have five traps and I bait them every day, but I don’t set the trap. What I want is for the rat to get used to taking the bait. So every third day I set one of the traps and I always catch a rat.

People always know what I do with the dead rat, because I don’t know. Although, it is interesting, because it shows another animal behavior.

Like I said, I always wear gloves, so when I have a rat to get rid of, I put on the gloves and take the rat in the trap to some open ground on my plot and drop the rat on the ground and go and have a cup of coffee to wait for what happens next.

This all happens between four and four-thirty in the afternoon: while I’m sitting in my chair, a red kite appears in the sky, circles and then swoops down, picks up the dead rat and flies over the nearby trees. . This has been going on for the last two years, summer and winter.

So to catch rats, you need: rat traps, peanut butter, gloves, patience, and a routine.