Farm Drama: The Rat Saga Continues

The battle against rats on our farm continued this week.  We had a small victory mid-week with one rat whose tail was caught in a trap. I have been praying that we will solve the rat problem and had some inspiration this week while watching "War Farm", a documentary about farming in Britain during WWII.  Rats are a major source of expense and waste on farms and apparently they had specially trained rat exterminator girls that traveled around helping farmers in Britain during wartime.  I listened carefully to what she advised the farmer and learned that rats are neophobic.  This fear of new things is what has been making it seem like they are too smart for all of our traps and poisons.  It also explains why we just happened to catch a rat by the tail after that trap has been in the duck house for almost two weeks. It became familiar enough that he was willing to step through the milk crate, though not head first into the trap.

 Thursday night (3am on Friday) I was nursing baby A and getting him back in his crib when I heard a lot of banging around in the kitchen.  I tiptoed downstairs to see what was wrong and hubby told me that he heard a rodent scritching around under the fridge. Hubby set up some cardboard boxes to try to catch it when he moved the fridge.  Instead of being caught the rat darted out toward the laundry room (which we had determined was likely the entrance from outside based on droppings under the washing machine). Hubby had closed all the doors in that hallway though so the rat raced down into the library. I had to hit it with the broom to keep it from running toward me. Eeek!
We barricaded the doorways into the library with some benches and then hubby started inspecting and moving the furniture, finally moving the couch. The rat ran out full speed toward the barrier and easily got around it.  At that point I started to panic because the rat could have gone anywhere on the first floor other than the library.  I had been standing in front of the stairs so at least I knew at least he wasn't up there.   We began a meticulous search of the first floor.  I was just praying that we would be able to find it and get it out of the house. Otherwise, I knew I would never be able to sleep and would probably have to take the kids and go sleep/live in the car until hubby found and got rid of it.
It took forever to find it.
Finally, hubby's careful persistence paid off and he found it at the opposite end of the house, wedged between the wall and the cupboards attached to the wall in the toy room.  The space was no larger than an inch wide and he was crammed in there. I couldn't believe it when hubby said that he was back there. Since he was stuck in such a tiny crack I thought the most straight forward option would be to kill him while he was in there, then move the cupboards and clean it up. But we had no guns or bows that could do the job.  I suggested we make a spear with one of my rabbit butchering knives.  So hubby stood on one side and slid the homemade spear between the cupboard and the wall while I used a dowel and banged against the wall on the other side to try to shoo the rat toward the spear. It was terrifying. He was incredibly fast despite the narrow space and I had not counted on the fact that he could CLIMB the wall.  Eventually the rat decided my weapon was less threatening and ran out over my booted feet while I screamed.
Hubby vaulted over things in the toy room and the den determined to keep the rat in sight this time.  He successfully followed it to its new hiding place behind the black pantry buffet.  By this time it was about 5 am and I was nauseous from lack of sleep and the trauma of a rat running at me in my house. Hubby had sweat dripping off his face from his exertions. The rat stayed put under the cupboard while we put up our third offensive. By then we knew that the rat could jump several feet into the air so we used folding tables and a coffee table laying on its side to surround the buffet cupboard. We had brooms and sticks and a bucket ready. The plan was for hubby to scare it out from his side toward where I was standing ready to "pin" it with my broom and then he would put the bucket on top. After about twenty tries of the rat running toward me and hurling itself against the side of the folding table wall,  we realized that I was not nearly fast enough to pin it with my broom. I suggested that we fill my side of the barricade with all the rat size snap traps that we had in the house (3 traps - since most were outside).  Then when the rat hurled itself against the barrier he landed near a trap and his tail got caught. He pulled the trap with him under the cupboard and we thought we had him until we pulled the trap out ready to put the bucket over him and he yanked his now bleeding tail out of the trap. We kept at it - chase the rat out, shoo him toward traps, again and again, until finally he landed his foot in a trap and we were able to get the bucket over him.
Shaking and panting from our efforts we victoriously put thick cardboard over the bucket and carried the rat outside to finish him off.  I was supposed to slowly slide the cardboard back just enough so hubby could wallop him with a 2 by 4. Somehow the rat freed his foot and sprang out of the bucket just as hubby was pushing the board into it. He ESCAPED into the woods. Hours of traumatic effort and the result was just an injured rat outside of our house. But at least he was outside and hopefully he will never want to come back?!?
I am not brave about rats. I was trying hard to be brave and managed to make it through all of our efforts without breaking down. But it was hard to sleep for the next couple nights. I think I have some kind of mild PTSD as images of the attack kept playing in my mind.
On Saturday morning I went outside to check on some things and had a happy shock -- my girl Icy brought me a prize:

 She killed a groundhog/gopher/woodchuck/marmot (lots of names for it depending on where you grew up).  Yay! We had seen her stalking them, but they mostly stay around the edges of the yard outside the dogs' fence.

 We gave her lots of praise and pats.  She was so proud of her prize. I am sure that she knew how pleased we were with what she did. Shark was jealous.
Later that day I needed to clean out the rabbits' poop trays.  Normally this is not too scary for me, but after all the rat trauma this week I made hubby stand by while I pulled out some trays that I could see had some diggings around them. And sure enough we found another nest of rat babies. Ugh. We had to pull the whole row of cages out.  These babies were bigger/older than the ones we found last time and they tried to run away.  At least one escaped out the side, but we had the shovel handy and managed to kill four of them on their way out.

Needless to say, I am ready to call a professional and pay for some help at this point.  The exterminator is coming on Monday afternoon.  I REALLY hope he has some good advice/skills to contribute because I don't think we can take much more of this.

We implemented some preventative measures based on what we have learned so far about the rats. And we have a couple more that we are trying this week. We cleaned out the garage and moved all the feed and hay/straw out into the high tunnel.  We have been storing feed in metal trash cans for years now, but with the covid quarantining we have been buying more than usual (more than would fit in the cans).  We will make sure that it all fits in the trash cans from now on, though we haven't seen any damage to any of the feed bags at all.  Mostly it is one less possible food source close to the house.  AND the kids inevitably spill some feed when they are doing their chores.  This way it will be outside and easily disintegrate in the dirt of the high tunnel.  Eventually we will store it in the aviary... when that is built.

We also learned that norway rats like to build their tunnels under structures that act as a roof for their upper level of tunnels. Hubby raised the rabbit cages up on bricks so that now none of the poop trays are against the ground.

And starting this week we are feeding all the animals in the mornings instead of at night.  Feeding them at night was a good incentive to get the birds to go in their houses for the night, but it means that the bulk of the feed is put out just before the rats become active.  The hope is that by putting feed out in the morning it will be all but gone by the time the rats are out.