Rat(s) in the ceiling - advice?

[goober (Doug)]

Been hearing little pitter patters and noises over our bedroom ceiling for a few days, thinking it was possums on the roof. Last night it was a lot louder, so up the manhole for a peek and hello! Poo everywhere. Lived here for 20 years and this is a first.

Any advice that works?
Ratsack? Or other?
Traps?
Napthalene (they don't like the smell?)
Professional pet control?

Neighbour has dogs and we have a four year old, so a little reluctant to spread poison around.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

[multiweb (Marc)]

A lot of roaches will make a mess. You can find some concentrated solution from Mitre 10 (Pest Patrol from Amgrow). Not cheap but the best I've used. It dillutes (100ml) in water and makes 5L of spray solution. If they're rats use the large blue pellets from bunnings. They love the stuff and they're very effective. If you spray do it on a week-end so you can leave the whole house open to vent.

[cybereye (Mario)]

Living in Queensland I can tell you that a snake in the ceiling will do the trick!

[Larryp (Laurie)]

I get them in my roof sometimes. Pest control guy puts little bowls of bait strategically around the roof cavity, and it gets rid of them

[Barrykgerdes]

I had trouble with mice last year. Used a couple of packets of ratsack. They loved it and got into my computer to spew? Ruined the motherboard. Only one mouse died from the poison. I ended up catching the rest with unbaited traps where they walked.

Barry

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Don't use rat poisons that use Warfrin - they are tolerant of the stuff now. Use other poison baits that use Bromadiolone as the active ingredient. If you don't want to handle the baits, there are little "throw" satchels that you just toss into the roof cavity - mice & rats do the rest.

These blighters are near impossible to get rid off. You can go nuts trying to find where they enter from, and all they need is a hole as small as a peanut to get in. So USE THEM to tell you when they are back so all that's needed is to launch a couple more satchels and you're done for another day.

I get these buggers too, and as they are everywhere, you can only look to control them when they move back in. You will never eliminate them, so use their habits & noises to your advantage.

Mental.

[MattT]

Used to have mice and rats until we got a cat, now all gone...the cat has fun and doesn't eat much cat food! Get a cat.

[Kunama]

Talon wax blocks, buy the 1kg tub.
These can be nailed down to your truss timbers.
Believe me you will want to nail them down, the first time I used them without fixing them down, .......... yes I remember now. ..... it was the night of the Rodents Annual Volleyball Tournament, clunk clunk for 8 hours!!

[casstony]

The risk with using poison in the roof is that the rat crawls down into a wall cavity to die - then the stink forces you to pull plaster off the wall to get the carcas. If your house is on stumps you can put poison under the floor making sure that dogs can't get under the house.

It helps if your neighbors also control the pests so reinfestation is less frequent.

[casstony]

Originally Posted by MattT

Used to have mice and rats until we got a cat, now all gone...the cat has fun and doesn't eat much cat food! Get a cat.

We got a dog to expell the neighbourhood cats from our yard - the cats were much noisier than the rats.

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

The rats are going to crawl to where ever they will/can until they drop. Doesn't matter where you leave the bait. Best is to put it in the ceiling, and their nest, so there is no chance of the bait being taken out into reach of pets, and they die out of reach of being eaten too by pets.

My mum lives in inner Sydney. If only she could get to have her neighbours admitt to there being a problem! would make things soooo much easier.

[casstony]

Alex, I'm speaking from experience - picture me on a ladder with my arm through the wall vent feeling around for a dead rat and my wife holding a plastic bag, dancing around as I drop the putrid carcas into the bag

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Yep, every experience is different, as is every house.

I lived in a terrace house for some 25 years - impossible to stop pests. And when your neighbours deny there is any issue, it's like stopping a flood with a pebble.

My house now is double brick and free standing. And yet the buggers still manage to find a way into the roof! Aaargh!!!

[Baddad (Marty)]

17 years experience getting rats, possums and birds out of roof cavities.
Go and buy two packs of Talon, woolworths or Coles.
Inside the boxes are sub boxes / packets. On each packet place a small smear of peanut paste. On the outside. A SMEAR you are not feeding them. About half a square cm and half a mm deep. Its the smell that will attract them. Open slightly each packet.
Throw these into the ceiling void. Wait 7 days. After 8 days it should be all clear.

Rats are a community type animal. Instinct drives them away from the nesting area when sick. It is rare for a rat to die in the ceiling void. If it does happen the smell goes after 7 - 10 days. Depending on temperature.
I treated rats every work day and had maybe one each year where a rat died in the ceiling.

They are nesting up there. The small amount of peanut paste will be easily found. Rats have "stereo smell" They can tell what direction and approx how far to the source. Believe me that it is only a tiny amount of peanut paste that you need. Too much and you invite cockroaches.

Cheers

[pmrid (Peter)]

I did the Ratsak trick recently for a roof-rat problem. I put the bait under the house where they seem to be making ingress-egress and after a couple of weeks, the activity in the ceiling stopped. Then a week or so later we had a good sudden rain incident and lo and behold - decomposing rat carcasses landed in the top collection point of my rainwater tanks flushed put of the gutter where they had died - so our domestic water is now a somewhatr dilutred rat soup. Very queasy when I think about it.

It seems that rats will head towards a water source when they have a gutful of the poison - so if you collect your rainwater, consider checking your gutters after poisoning. If you have covered gutters (we do as a means of keeping leaves etc out of them) you'll have to devise something else.
Peter

[acropolite (Phil)]

IMO traps are the most effective, get a couple of sizes so you're sure to catch your target. I've used both poisons and traps, but prefer traps because of the afformentioned smell issue.

The biggest problem with mice and rats is that they love to chew cables, both electrical and phone, I've even seen them chew through fibre optic cable, hard nylon jacket, silicon grease filling, glass and all.

[Baddad (Marty)]

Trapping rats is rather labour intensive. Its not always 100% effective. Some members of the colony are trap shy or become shy as you progress through eliminating them. Without a good description of how frequent the noises are I would estimate you have at least 10 rats. usually more.

A pair of rats make almost no noise. As they breed, 5 - 10 each few months, the competition for food becomes intense. They chase each other. For the noises to be present you have a minimal number of 10 or more.

I did trapping sometimes. I often had 20 and more caught in each house.
Followed up by baiting.

Baiting hardly ever has them die in the ceiling they leave the nest area.
It does happen like I explained earlier on rare occasions.

Cheers

[astronut (John)]

I agree with Alexander, bait sachets in the roof cavity. We had a rat running around the roof, 6 sachets eliminated the problem.

[cybereye (Mario)]

Originally Posted by Baddad

On each packet place a small smear of peanut paste.

Oh the fun of being a New South Welshman in Queensland....that's Peanut Butter!

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Originally Posted by astronut

6 sachets eliminated the problem.

Man, that rat died one fat happy bugger!!!!

I can just see it lying back with the satchel on its belly, flicking down the tasty morses, with a pile of packets next to itself, as it watched tellie through a hole in the ceiling!