There's a rat in the kitchen

[Miss Daffodil]

I have a student house (5) students.
Last night got a Text from one. Saying they have Rats.
Now in the past there has been a problem when they leavefood out, and are generally unclean. We have always gone in and set traps andput rat poison down. Council stopped the free service 3 years ago.
Each year I go through the drill, no food left out etc, etc,do they listen? NO.
These are 3^rd year students and it’s their 2^ndyear in the house, we went in over August cleaned all the communal areas,cleaned all the outside wheelie bit full of maggots.
So this time round we call at the house left them some rattraps and basically said, get on with it.
Thoughts please.

[oscar]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Ask them for mummy and daddys phone number so you can call them and tell them they cant cope without them claening up after then and "probably" wiping their arses.

[PlanB]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

I have a student house (5) students.
Last night got a Text from one. Saying they have Rats.

. . . . So this time round we call at the house left them some rattraps and basically said, get on with it.
Thoughts please.

I would tackle the rats not the students since you haven't yet told them that you'll be removing their back garden and replacing it with a noisy building site any minute. You need to keep them onside or they'll exercise their right to quit the property.

Any pest control costs are tax deductible against their rent too.

The gestation period of rats is only 21 days so I'd get on with it if I were you since you say there is more than one rat (who may well fancy another one), or only the Pipe Piper will be able to recue the situation for you.

[IF]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Some Rats are handy to have in the kitchen

[PlanB]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen



As long as they get the dress code right. Green is not a good look on rodents

[diddlydee]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Rats can do a heck of a lot of damage to your property, so I would suggest it is in your best interests to get rid of them. I wouldn't leave it to the students. I would be laying poison traps outside the property as well as inside and once again talk to them about hygiene. Perhaps give them a factsheet about rats which might scare them into cleanliness!

An example of one is here: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/sites/defa...eet-rats_0.pdf

[Undercover Elsa]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

I live next to open fields and we get rats chancing their luck every autumn, looking for winter lodgings.
I hate doing it, but trays of rat bait mixed with chocolate mousse (I use the cheap Tesco six packs) or peanut butter are effective, placed where they run...along the base of walls, in/under cupboards etc. Wherever you see droppings. Cover them with a piece of wood or tile leaned up and do it where pets/birds other wildlife can't access it. Renew it as soon as it's gone, until they're not taking it any more. Pack any gnawed access points with wire wool. Outside I also pour bleach down any holes which makes their new "home" inhospitable.
Once the building work starts they'll probably move on anyway..

[philnicandamy]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Hmm last place we lived had a dealer next door with 2 VERY large dogs...he decided to start storing dried food for the dogs in his loft..eventually large ammount of rats made their way from his house into our loft area as well....bugger to get rid council were next to hopeless eventually got a guy in through an insurance thing i'd forgotten I had through my bank he visited a couple of times and after a while all went quiet...till one night in bed the scuttling started AGAIN in the roof space

got the same firm back again and eventually did the job..guy suggested some of the electronic scarers as well (you plug em into your mains socket the idea is they send a signal through the houses ringmain at a frequency most pests cannot bear) bought a couple of em from B&Q a few years ago and they did the job no mice/rats/spiders/wasps/bees ever again!

[oscar]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

got the same firm back again and eventually did the job..guy suggested some of the electronic scarers as well (you plug em into your mains socket the idea is they send a signal through the houses ringmain at a frequency most pests cannot bear) bought a couple of em from B&Q a few years ago and they did the job no mice/rats/spiders/wasps/bees ever again!

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They are a pain in the arse though if your hearing happens to be good enough to be in that range though. PEEP every bloody 30 seconds.

[nightwatch]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Mum had mice problems, were coming from next door, so we bought a couple of these for her, worked a treat. then 6 months later she got a hearing aid, said it was driving her mad, she could hear voices and a microwave beeping( no she wasn't on the bottle) turns out next door had also got the same model repellant and she was picking up the sound waves from next door through her hearing aid.

forgot to say she could also hear a doorbell, which is funny as she can't hear her own!

[Miss Daffodil]

Re: There's a rat in the kitchen

Thank you all for your replies. Yes we have been working along side the students to tackle the rat problem.

Setting traps, and putting rat poison down under the floor.

To date we have caught 10 rats, I think they have learnt a lesson on cleanliness, the kitchen is spotless now.