A RAT !!

avf100

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Dec 23, 2011
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364
Location
Lancaster,ca
On our last outing a rat found it's way into the trailer. It was on our last night and we were going home in the morning. I woke up about 4 am and decided to go down and kick back in the recliner. I was sitting there and I heard a couple of thumping noises that I thought came from outside. Is someone or some critter messing around outside? I sat there, waiting for more noises when the light in the pantry came on! What the hell, ghosts? Then I saw it, on the top shelf, a friggin rat! I watched him climb into the box where we keep the chip bags. What the hell am I going to do, I just sat there with my eyes glued to the pantry. After a couple of minutes he climbed down to the bottom of the pantry, crawled under the pantry door and made a left towards the front of the living area. I jumped up and turned on the lights, but I couldn't find it.
Oh well, maybe it decided to exit our trailer, wishful thinking. A couple of minutes later the pantry light comes back, my friend is still here! I go get the broom, determined to either knock it out or send it to rat heaven. I opened the pantry door, broom in hand.
It sees me and jumps down onto the floor and I proceed to try to smack it with the broom. I hit it a few times, but he got away, ran under the recliner. I'm surprised the commotion didn't wake up my wife up in the bedroom.
I sat down at the dinette with the broom close by, hoping I would get another chance. After a few minutes, I grabbed the flashlight and started looking under all the furniture,but I couldn't find it.
My wife got up and never heard all the commotion, she uses ear plugs. So I told her about the rat and she gets a little freaked out about it. We never saw it again so we were hoping it exited our trailer.
The next morning after getting home, I put a couple of traps in the trailer, but by the next day, no rat in the traps. And I didn't see anymore rat droppings anywhere, so I hope it's gone.
My wife, who is a little bit of a germ-a-phobe, spent about 8 hours cleaning and disinfecting the trailer. This is the first time we've had a rat in any of our trailers and hope it's the last. Good luck, right?
Oh, and the broom did not survive, I broke the handle.
 
A rat, or a big mouse? Just asking because some people use the terms interchangeably. A rat would definitely freak me out a bit. :)
 
With the design of RVs in general, rodent infestations are inevitable. Just how you respond is what counts
 
I think it was a rat...it was a lot bigger than a mouse. Not as big as a new york city rat though. Lol
 
I think it was a rat...it was a lot bigger than a mouse. Not as big as a new york city rat though. Lol
This past Feb while down in Florida there was a big gulch behind the RV that briefly flooded during a thunderstorm. Later while in the RV I first noticed mouse droppings on the floor in front of the oven door. Then I noticed a mouse hanging from the bottom of the door, I thought he was trying to get into the oven. I grabbed a plastic Solo cup and tried to pull him by the rail but he was apparently stuck, so now I'm going to have to open the oven door and try to grab the little bugger before he gets away. I was surprised as hell when I opened the door and saw how stuck he really was! I pulled and pulled and couldn't get him out... I pulled hard enough that his tail popped off, he wasn't budging! He was stuck in one of the vent holes under the oven door and I thought I might have to get some tin snips and do some cutting and bending. Finally wearing rubber gloves and grabbing him with a paper towel I managed to get him out by sticking a screwdriver in a few holes down and forcing his head back through the hole. Needless to say he didn't survive the ordeal. Pretty sure I broke his neck earlier so most everything else was pain free.
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Yeah that's gruesome. I used to do pool cleaning and sometimes a drowned rat would get stuck in the pool cleaner and I would have to pry them out with a screwdriver. Makes me cringe thinking about it.
 
i really like those electric traps. They have both rat size and mouse size on amazon. I caught a bushy tailed wood rat that had invaded our RV the first night after I put the trap out. It ate up a bunch of our electric cords and left dropping and slimy urine all over. Our dog kept us up all night trying to find it.
 
I hate rats. Years ago - first house in NJ, the church a couple hundred yards away and separated from houses with a small culvert (not much water) decided to demolish the existing structure and build a new one but left the remains of the old church in a pile next to a culvert. You can guess what was in their old structure. Our garage was ground level close to the culvert - perfect access. Tried rat-sized glue boards and the only thing they caught were the baby sitters shoe one early morning and the dogs paw one evening. Went to old faithful rat snap traps with peanut butter, garlic powder, and salami mixed as bait. Caught 17 rats - the last being the big guy. Finally found where they were getting in and mixed up a batch of concrete patch and filled a good size hole.

Always had mice in every house. But in the 'rat' house, it was amazing to see the suckers walk in front of the dog, pick up a piece of dog food (she used to eat something called dinner rounds), and scoot with it down under the cellar door with the dog wondering what was going on while this was repeated until the dish was empty. For the longest time, couldn't figure how she was eating so much food and not gaining weight. So where were the mice stashing the food? Car had difficulty starting one morning so I popped the hood and a rain of dinner rounds came pouring out of the inner hood holes. Engine compartment was loaded everywhere even in the air filter. Friends came over and dropped something behind a sofa cushion in the family room which we used every day. Another bag of dog food in there. Last place was pulling the old ugly paneling down in the basement to replace it. Filled with dog food between the paneling and all the 1x2s they were tacked into. I estimate 30-40lbs of dog food.
 

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