Seen A Rat.....

My friend sent me this today, thought it relevant ...

After viewing these adorable pictures

Please read end message, ...........it's just beautiful!

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FOR SALE : One F---ing Useless Cat

 

I think this one is possibly a Woodland Rattus Rattus

 

In this time of austerity it seems the first thing to get cut from local authority budgets was the pest control departments; hence we are now seeing a huge upsurge in the population of rats. I saw some rats walking down the street opposite where I work and contacted the local council only to be told this and that I would be welocome to contact a private company to "cleanse the area" at my expense. At the risk of sounding political (for which I apologise) the Cheif Exec of our council is on £180k per year but we have no funds to control rats and other vermin and day centres for the elderly are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. My solution would be to boot him out, replace him with someone earning a third of that and put the saving towards pest control and re-opening day centres for the elderly. Rant over

 

I've seen rats going for bird food (on a bird table) in daylight. Some people put out pieces of bread and meat too large for birds to eat at the table and they fly off with them, very often dropping them in adjoining gardens

Nail a strip of weldmesh (or expanded metal lath brick reinforcement) all around the perimeter, both across the ends of shed bearers and to the faces of those at edges to prevent rats gnawing through. Just because you don't have food in your garden doesn't stop rats from living there and feeding next door.

Our hen run is rat proof and the straw removed from the garden. Despite the best efforts of our hens there's always some food left in it, as demonstrated by the corn growing in the composting straw at our plot. Rabbit/Guinea Pig bedding can also contain un-eaten food and if tipped on an open compost heap will attract rats.

 

Update.....well 'Ben' as he's been christened by my wife narrowly survived an attack from a large adult magpie 3 days ago leaving him with an open wound to his back leg and a limp. It happened when the magpie was on the shed roof and the rat came out from under the shed to have a mooch around oblivious to the magpie on the shed roof, instantly the magpie dropped on it and pecked at it a few times before twice trying to fly off with it, eventually though the magpie dropped it and the rat hobbled off. Amazing to watch, nature at its best in your own back garden

Now it is injured it at least makes it easy to identify and it is still the only rat we've seen so hopefully he is just a loner

 

Scrungee thanks for the tip about the shed, I have some mesh that will do the job