We have a minor mouse / rat problem outside the house – I blocked up the hole the little bastards had dug through mortar into the corner of the cellar while it was still pretty fresh and a variety of traps and a wireless CCTV cam suggest there’s nothing still down there.

I’m having a concerted block off any more potential access routes weekend – we have rodent-proof stuff to do it with – but I’m also wondering whether it’s worth killing them outside. I’ve very taken with a New Zealand-made CO2-powered ‘humane’ trap that attracts them with bait then stoves their little skulls in when they stick them up a tube. It’s genius… and cat safe too.

https://goodnature.co.nz

In truth, I partly just like the thing, but I’m wondering if there’s a sound reason to try and bring down the rodent population outside the house. It seems like a logical thing to do. I get that the primary directive is simply to make it as hard as possible for them to get inside, which I’m doing, but is it worth trying to reduce the number of the little bastards outside in the garden as well?

And yes, I know it’s not very buddhist.

What’s attracting them to your garden ? excess bird food is a common one with rats.
Find out what they’re eating and remove that – then kill the furry little monsters .

Yeah, we do have a bird feeder – complete with saucer thing to minimise spillage, which works reasonably well and we don’t scatter stuff on the ground – but we also have a farm out the back of the house, so there’s a general rat issue locally.

If next door’s cat did its job properly, it wouldn’t be a problem :-/

I got one of them for work after it was recommended on here a while back.
I can also now recommend it. Caught several at work. The Rentokill lady was well impressed with it too!
It is now in our kitchen as MrsDTS saw a rat in there this week, builder must have left a gap under the new extension.. So I have done similar to you, blocked all outside access and opened inside as I don’t want it rotting in the floor space.
MiniDTs did ask what it meant on the packaging..
Sniff…Sniff….KERPOW!
You will need to get the additional cage for the front or it will KERPOW the local cats or non rodent wildlife.
Seems there are allot of rats about at the moment, I was at a suppliers workshop yesterday and there were about 4 scampering about in the car park, seasonal thing?

Cat?! A good cat that could control a rat infestation

Mate you need a border terrier*

*Other terriers are available.

We had a customer in today who said that she had a mouse.
It went through a little hole in the skirting board.
She made the husband remove the skirting board and found £7000 stashed behind there. All old notes but swapped up.

You will need to get the additional cage for the front or it will KERPOW the local cats or non rodent wildlife.

Didn’t know there was a cage – do you have a link for that. The manufacturer claims that it’s cat safe and I can’t see how its head would fit up there – tail maybe…

We had a customer in today who said that she had a mouse.
It went through a little hole in the skirting board.
She made the husband remove the skirting board and found £7000 stashed behind there. All old notes but swapped up.

She stole the mouse’s life savings? That’s harsh.

https://goodnature.co.nz

I’m a bit weirded out by this – I’ve absolutely no issue with killing pests (had my own fair share of mice fun a couple of times) but the whole ‘collect your data and share with friends’ side of it seems a bit morbid!

“Mate you need a border terrier*”

You don’t need a Border terrier if you’ve got an Irish Backstop terrier…

Seems there are allot of rats about at the moment, I was at a suppliers workshop yesterday and there were about 4 scampering about in the car park, seasonal thing

very much seasonal. As the temperatures drop so too does their food supply. They start looking for somewhere new, warm and dry and with food supply.

If you’re rural too all the pheasant feeding etc dwindles about this time so lots of proper (out in the wild where they should be, if not in such numbers) ones move on looking for food.

I’ve got one appeared in my floor/ceiling cavity it seems. Sods.

But no waste of time killing them outside, you may as well try and bail out your local river with a tea cup.

I’ve been swithering posting a similar question on here for the last month. 2 of the little gits were sitting bold as brass in the middle of our garden under a bird feeder. We’ve stopped feeding the birds and we’ve not seen them since, it’s a shame, we’d get tons of birds, pheasants, partridges and woodpeckers. It was our first winter in the house last year and we didn’t see any sign of rats despite putting out tons of bird feed. I was wondering if the long hot summer helped boost the population?

We’re surrounded by fields so I’d wondered the same as BWD, if they’re just outside is there any point in waging a campaign against them (other than remove food source). I bought a couple of mechanical traps in boxes anyway, I’m yet to set them though.

<emou don’t need a Border terrier if you’ve got an Irish Backstop terrier…

I’ve absolutely no issue with killing pests (had my own fair share of mice fun a couple of times) but the whole ‘collect your data and share with friends’ side of it seems a bit morbid!

As long as they don’t pose on Instagram with their kill.

I’m a bit weirded out by this – I’ve absolutely no issue with killing pests (had my own fair share of mice fun a couple of times) but the whole ‘collect your data and share with friends’ side of it seems a bit morbid!

Yeah, I wasn’t really buying into the optional wireless connectivity and data sharing bit. Maybe the idea is that rats read about it on the internet and go elsewhere?

waste of time killing them outside, you may as well try and bail out your local river with a tea cup

Not necessarily. We had one regular visitor to our garden – it would run across the decking, up the wall and into the ceiling cavity (we could hear it around midnight each night) then presumably up to one of the flats above.
Put a trap outside and killed it and never heard any others doing the same thing.

Got ours from these guys
Collins nets

Stops cats from putting a paw up inside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=tj188puvQBs

Got ours from these guys
Collins nets

Stops cats from putting a paw up inside

Cheers for that.

Not necessarily. We had one regular visitor to our garden – it would run across the decking, up the wall and into the ceiling cavity (we could hear it around midnight each night) then presumably up to one of the flats above.
Put a trap outside and killed it and never heard any others doing the same thing.

That’s kind of what I was thinking. Wipe out the ones that have developed an affinity for your house/garden.

It’s also kind of psychologically interesting. On a deeper level, I just sort of want to kill the nasty little bastard things. I thought it was rude to try and burrow into our cellar without asking first.