My War With Rats In My Garden – Feathered Photography

Over the years I’ve noticed the occasional rat (aka Brown Rat or Norway Rat) in my garden but not very often and I’d never noticed any damage they’d done to my plants or produce. I hated having them there but apparently not enough to do anything about it.

But this year it’s different. For over a month I saw at least one rat out there every day, often at about the same time of day and sometimes more than once a day. I never saw more than one at the same time but, knowing rats, where there’s one there’s usually more.

This is what put me over the edge!

Rats will readily eat many fruits and vegetables, but they love tomatoes. They ignore tomatoes when they’re green but when they begin to ripen up, this is what happens. When I saw this my blood boiled. Several times I saw a rat scurrying from beneath one tomato plant to another but for some reason it didn’t occur to me that they were actually eating the tomatoes. Silly me.

So now I’m a man on a mission to kill rats. Mess with my garden tomatoes and there’s a steep price to pay.

This is my rat-killing arsenal. Over the last few weeks it’s grown over time.

• Havahart trap – This trap has been a complete bust. Rats are too smart for it, even when it’s baited with peanut butter which is one of their favorite foods. I’ve watched rats walk right by it and go for my tomatoes.
• Slingshot – you may laugh at using a slingshot but they’re known to be effective against rats. The ammo I’m using (in bowl) is essentially steel ball bearings, so if I could ever hit one that would likely be the end of it. The problem with a slingshot is that they’re not very accurate (I’m getting better). I’ve taken about a dozen shots at rats and missed every time, but I’ve come very, very close.  But they know it when a ball bearing goes whizzing by. There’s a wooden fence directly behind my garden to stop any stray ammo.
• Traditional rat trap – so far this has been my only effective weapon. I’ve killed three rats with them (I have two of them).
• Pellet gun – I know, it almost looks like a sniper rifle but it’s only an air rifle that shoots pellets. So far I haven’t used it and I hope not to. But I will if I have to.

After I caught my first rat in the traditional trap, they wouldn’t go anywhere near it when it was sitting on top of the ground. So I started burying the highly conspicuous wood platform so that all that could be seen above ground was the bait tray (baited with peanut butter) and the metal trapping mechanism. This works. I’ve caught two more rats with partially buried traps.

I hide the trap beneath my huge rhubarb plants where rats love to hide and birds don’t go. The last thing I want to do is trap a bird or some prowling neighborhood cat (I almost never see cats in my yard, or their tracks).

The photo below shows a dead rat in the trap. If you don’t want to see it, scroll no further. You’ve been warned.

This is one of the rats I caught beneath my rhubarb. Believe it or not, this rat wasn’t actually caught in the trap (not even its tail) – it was lying next to the trap as you see here. When the trap was sprung the metal mechanism must have hit the rat (probably in the head, killing it) and knocked the rat away from the trapping mechanism at the same time.

I’m relieved to report that it’s now been five days since I’ve seen a rat or any new garden damage caused by rats. I’m not naive enough to think I got them all but any survivors must have taken the hint and vamoosed. At least temporarily. Perhaps seeing their dead buddies in traps and having steel ball bearings whiz over their heads was a little too much for them.

Don’t waste your time trying to engender any sympathy or empathy in me for rats. It won’t happen. Yes, I know that rats are smart. Yes, I’ve had pet white rats and enjoyed them (they’re a different sub-species). And yes, I read “Ratman’s Notebooks” and saw the movie “Willard“.

I still hate rats.

Ron

Notes:

• My neighbors support my rat-killing efforts. They even encourage them.
• I’d never use rodenticides or sticky traps to kill rats and my goal is to always kill them “humanely” (a word that I find ironic). Even rats don’t deserve to suffer.
• My dad (who was living with me at the time) built the redwood patio table in photo #2 for me about 27 years ago. All I’ve done to it in those 27 years is sand it, twice (it’s outside year-round). Skilled craftmanship and quality materials matter.