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Over the past few weeks we have had lots of scratching noises in the roof
Yesterday we got the Christmas Tree out of the loft and something has eaten lots of foam insulation and left presents everywhere.
I went and bought some rat poison blocks earlier (which smell gorgeous) and put them up in the loft space I can get to .
Just been back up and could hear scratching . Some of the blocks are gone already ! Something also popped its head up. I would have said more squirrels than rat but it wasn’t that close and was at the end of a headtorch beam .
Some what do you think we have got rats or squirrels?
Based on a quick Google image search I would say that’s definitely either squirrel or rat poo.
Thanks for the clarity in your answer 🙂
Looks like what comes out of my guinea pigs. Hope that helps.
possums ?
Google says rat droppings can be mistaken for coffee beans, so try a nice latte, see if it works
If you have got rats, the last thing you want is to be poisoning them and have them die somewhere inaccessible – apparently, the smell of them decomposing is not nice at all.
I worked in a Portakabin where they’d put rat poison down. A rat kindly expired somewhere inaccessible under the floor, first it was the invasion of blue bottles and there was the smell of putrefying flesh that took months to dissipate.
How big is that finger? Can you put it against a ruler for scale?
or a map of wales
I don't think it's a whale's poo Maccruiskeen.
Do whales even poo?
I mean, it might be whale poo...
Looks like ratty to me. Mice poo is onion seed size, some bat’s poo is similar to rat but you can usually work out if it’s been dropped from height and bats are famously stealthy, you won’t hear them scratching. Try to avoid rat poison, some say that rats will go outside once poisoned as it makes them thirsty, but you do not want one rotting in a cavity somewhere, mice are bad for a couple of weeks, would imagine a fat rat would be like living next door to Fred West
Do whales even poo?
Famously whale poop is very valuable - as ambergris it is an ingredient in perfume. Unlike rat poop which is an ingredient in unpleasant diseases.
*quickly edits letter to santa*
socks
satuma
whale poo
looks like mice to me
I've had squirrels, it looks similar. They are destructive and bought a ceiling down when they chewed a pipe
Don't use poison, it'll end up in the food chain and kill whatever eats the squirrel. Cats, birds of prey, fox whatever.
Dat be rat
However you need to kill them, kill them. And quickly.
That's rat pooh.
Get a wriggle on to get heavy duty snap traps and find where it/they are coming from and block it off (fix if broken).
Aarav, Isabella, Hiroshi, Maria, Nia, Luca, Sofia, Mateo, Zain, Ana, Liam, Yara, Emma, Amir, Leila, Akira, Kofi, Noor, Rafael, Chloe, Zola, Saanvi, Olivia, Dmitry, Kiara, Jiro, Alejandro, Mila, and Theo.
Looks to big to be a mouse...I'd say rat, or roughly rat sized rodent.
Rat poo, unless near tring / High Wycombe then might be Glis Glis (european edible dormouse). Either way no poison as will ingest and then stink out house. Traps.
Another vote for rat.
Ditch the poison pronto. Snap traps, load with a peanut butter/Nutella mix, but don't set them. Apply with gloved hands. Put them around the edges of the space.
Keep renewing for a week or so, then set them (still use gloves, they're very cautious of new smells)
Check and empty frequently. They will likely send the small weak ones in first. Be prepared to despatch any that may not have been finished off.
We had Ms Bruce's animal poo chart out and it looks like rat to us.
Looks to big to be a mouse…I’d say rat, or roughly rat sized rodent.
Such as squirrels, perhaps
Famously whale poop is very valuable – as ambergris it is an ingredient in perfume. Unlike rat poop which is an ingredient in unpleasant diseases.
Wrong end. Ambergris is vomit isn't it?
I stand corrected. In most definitely is shat out. Interestingly i thought it was used as a scent compound but its actually a fixitive.
Adding this to your Christmas list might help identify your poops...
If it's Glis Glis - good luck with that, despite being non native they are a protected species & are very destructive:-(
Things have escalated 🙁
Made there way on to the kitchen !
Do I just get some expanding foam and block that hole ? Very conscious they have nibble the out off that cable . Given there isn’t a dead rat attached to it I assume it’s fairly safe like that ?
I'd say at this stage you need everything you can throw at it. Poison, breakback traps, the works. Possibly up to and including full on Rentokil type measures. Rats (and squirrels) can destroy a house quite quickly once they start chewing through cables and fixings.
You can get gas-powered bolt gun things - it's a tube that bolts to a wall, you put the bait up the tube, Ratty puts his head in and a sensor trips a bolt gun then resets. I believe @badlywireddog used such traps to good effect in his cellar.
Do I just get some expanding foam and block that hole ?
I'd say no, they'll eat through that in no time of they want back in. I'd push a load of scrumpled up chicken wire in first, then go with proper mortar as it looks well hidden. Dunno what to suggest about all the surrounding plaster board though as presumably they could just move a little bit down and go again.
Once you’ve got rid of them get an electrical test done (maybe an EICR) chewed through wires in the attic under insulation is a fire risk, and be careful you don’t grab a bare wire while you’re setting your traps.
You need to work out how they are getting into the house and then block that off before killing things - or trying to. When you get to that stage, the Good Nature trap, which is made in New Zealand is - as above - very effective and as humane as something that smacks a CO2-powered bolt into a rodent's head can be. ie: it's instant and kills them well dead.
Clasicallly rats get in a few ways. One is to simply gnaw their way in from ouside, but depending on where you live, there's a good chance they've got in from the sewers. We had them in our loft and under the floor space in our front room. It's easy to think that they're like The Great Escape and strategically tunnelling in, but it's more likely an accident.
I'm pretty sure the ones under the floor had burrowed in after finding a cracked join in our ancient Victorian pipework, tunnelled sideways and found a nice dry space to live in. The ones in the loft had come up a drain pipe that came down from the guttering and was open to the drains - I actually saw one emerge from that drain opening and dug in that way.
The answer for us was a rat-flap, a sort of one-way valve that means rats can get out to the sewers, but not back in - lots of versions, the Danes fit them by law and have some pretty neat double-flap ones that are the way to go if you want to be sure. Easy to fit yourself, come in two sizes. I also got a grate for the drain and epoxyed it on, so ratsy can't lift it - just in case. And for peace of mind stuck some metal mesh over the bottom of the pipe with zip-ties.
Once you've blocked access, you need to kill any left over rats. We had two, one died in a snap trap in the eaves of the loft, the other jumped into a record crate, so I took it outside. Next door's cat got it next day. I think it was weak from lack of food tbh. Bear in mind that food sources are mostly in the sewers / bird feeders / etc. Or, in our case, next door's dog food cupboard, which they somehow managed to access via our party wall. Bear in mind that they can follow wiring and pipework ducts.
If you're bemused, the rat flap solution is worth a try, I think. But if you live in a terraced street and have adjoining lofts etc, it may be a little more complicated, but killing them is pointless unless you work out where they got in and stop it off. Oh, they'll chew through foam, better to use metal mesh and then foam that to hold it in place.
Apparently they're quite good at not killing themselves nibbling at cables. They have a physiological need to gnaw things as otherwise their teeth just keep growing...
But basically, killing them is the easy bit, keeping them out in the first place is what you need to focus on.
I've been through similar over the last 12 months or so.
Pest control - only offered poison. Got rid of them for a bit.
Back again on and off, partly depending on weather.
Found a run coming from a sewer, had undermined a party wall... Mortared that lot up this summer.
Back again with the cold weather, more rounds of poison.
Found that a neighbour's door frame had been chewed through below some rotten decking. That has been mortared up.
You need hard building materials to keep them out - mortar and wire.
The damage they cause is incredible, hunt for the access point and get them killed ASAP.
Thanks we are a detached house in the countryside .
i don’t think it’s sewers that they are getting in from as that would mean them coming out through a toilet and there is not toilet access near where they are
i have an idea where one might be getting in but it’s a bigger to get to it
Stuffing chicken wire in that whole could be erm interesting with an exposed cable there!
Assume nothing. I only found the one from the sewer as I was replacing a concrete floor, found the burrow when I dug out the old floor. I traced that back to crumbled brick work in a drain inspection chamber, they had then dug under the party wall giving them access to under a suspended floor and behind lath and plaster walls. Free run of the house then...
Spent a day looking for how they were getting in ie lifting drain covers, filling in gaps in flashing etc with chicken wire , but no real entrance
Given up then when walking in the back garden saw some loft insulation
The buggers were getting in at the far end of the house to the noise. I can’t recall if this was always a gap (about 8cm x 8cm but anyhow now filmed with brick and mortar .
more poison down in the loft too just to make sure
