We had a rat in the loft. It sounded like it was wearing very large work boots. Our wildlife trail camera confirmed that it was indeed Roland. Being a limp wristed vegetarian, I thought that leaving a strongly worded letter up there should do the trick. No, Roland either didn’t or couldn’t read it. Next, I set a series of live capture traps baited with various thing including pork scratching (Black Country rat) and various chocolate bars. He ignored them all. By this time he had got to building a nest full of crap he had got from outside. Mostly cherry pips as well as offerings from the live capture traps (git) plus he was starting to wreck things.
My kids didn’t want him being murdered. My son was especially vocal on this until I pointed out that they can and will chew cables including the Ethernet cable supplying internet to his room. “The bugger has to die” was his new war cry. Kids today. So easily swayed.
We moved reluctantly to Murder/Death/Kill mode. I will not use poison and as mentioned, glue traps are just horrible. Rat sized snap traps seemed the way to go. Tests on a range of vegetables confirmed their effectiveness and horrified my poor daughter.
Roland had probed himself intelligent apart from him ignoring the strongly worded letter so I wore gloves when handling and baiting the traps to avoid scent.
After about a week of them being set, I heard one go off one night. RIP Rolland. It was the piece of Snickers bar smothered in M & S palm oil free chocolate spread that proved his downfall. There was no sounds after the trap went off. It was instant I think. The cheaper the trap, the more violent it seemed to be. They scared the willies out of me.
Sorry about the long post. It is cheaper than therapy.