He might have been using it for an apartment rather than a food source. Warm, protected, out of sight.

You could always hope you get a big ol' snake too, that would fix it. Of course then you'd have a big ol' snake. :-D I actually love snakes but not everyone does.

Rats do not exist as singularities, IME. A nuclear family, at a minimum.

Tox, oh I already have snakes too. They are everywhere right now. I ran into one last week, just a few feet away from the rat condo. I hate snakes worse than rats. It slithered off through the white picket fence and back into the woods. I left the garden hose running water onto the cardboard I just laid out around my banana trees and went upstairs. My wife looked down off the porch and started laughing. The joker came back and was drinking water right off the cardboard. By the time I got back down there with a shovel, he found his way back into the woods.

btw, I haven't had any luck with rat traps. I hesitate to put out poison because I don't want it knocked over and washed into the garden. I can't imagine it would be good for the soil, would it?

Last year several of my tomatoes had bites taken out of them; rat-sized bites. They must not have liked them, though.

Just last week I saw a rat in my yet-to-be-planted veggie garden. It was pretty brazen, just hanging out in broad daylight! It wasn't until I stomped my feet and waved my arms that it ran away into my neighbor's yard, with her ducks. I worry about those ducks.

Rats are the reason I stopped having chickens! They moved in from the neighbor's barn! (Also, they started eating their own eggs! GRRRRRRRRR)

Now days it's keeping the cholesterol in check also! LOL Nancy

If I had rats that bold in daylight, I think I'd get an air powered pellet gun.

Snakes I leave alone because they do not spread disease and 99% of them are not venomous or aggressive. Also, they eat baby rats. Learn your local snakes and as long as they aren't venomous, let them be and they will help keep the rodents in check (if you have rats, you also have mice, rabbits, probably moles, voles, etc.). JMHO.

in the best Yosemite Sam voice...."I hates rats!"

They move in where chickens/ducks etc are because it's a smogasborg of seeds! Also some egg leftovers (see above about chickens eating their eggs!)

A local feed store had to get rid of all of the birds they used to carry cause they had such an infestation of mice/rats! Then they had some nice straw/hay to nest in!

If you see one.....there are a half dozen more that you DON'T se! Nancy

Yep, I've read that by the time you notice them, it's because they are venturing out from their usual hiding spots because the population got too big to support their nightly and hidden activities. One year, I knew of one or two mice. My actual result for that year was about 20 mice caught and captured, along with 2 rats. I kept hoping they were just large mice but all my research showed that they were, indeed, rats. I couldn't believe my house area has rats!

I now take precautions in fall/winter/spring to try to eliminate them hanging around my yard. I guess they'll roam into it in search of food, coming in from neighbors' houses and such, but as long as they don't stay!

My one and only rat story: After Hurricane Katrina in '05, about 600 people relocated to our town from the Gulf Coast. I helped out at a free furniture warehouse to help people get furnishings for their new homes since many had arrived with almost nothing. One Saturday a nice pickup truck pulled up with a mattress in the back, in pretty good shape. When they started to unload it, a rat came running out of the truck bed and disappeared into the warehouse. The wife was screaming and jumping up and down. Turned out there was a neat 3" diameter hole in one edge of the mattress. They must have had it stored in the garage for too long and the rat was living inside. Mattress went straight into the dumpster of course. We never did find that rat, I guess he snuck back outside somehow.

I hates rats.

We used to have "roof rats"

Now we have a fox. She eats rats :)

I would pay a nominal fee to watch that.

me too :-)

Were you whacking the rat or stabbing it with the 5 tined fork?

Three steps for dealing with rats:

1. Remove food sources.
2. Remove habitat.
3. Get a terrier.

Once I got two Westies and moved my compost into a plastic bin my rat problem dropped precipitously.