Something? is making a home under my shed

Terrywoodenpic

Terrywoodenpic

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Terry
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Something has been taking a lot of effort to scrape out a home under my shed even breaking off part of the cladding.
I can find no clues, droppings or prints to suggest what it is. I will just have to wait and see......
It seems unnecessarily large for a rat.



 
It could well be a rat. They manage to dig though my sandstone garden walls at home. Maybe a weasel or such like.
 
I can't get an accurate idea of scale from the photo, but it looks a bit big to be rat?
 
Mr Badger said:
I can't get an accurate idea of scale from the photo, but it looks a bit big to be rat?
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It has given itself some 3 1/2" clearance. So something up to the size of a hedgehog could get in. Once under it would have the range of the entire floor area.
I do not understand why it has cleared the entire width of the area.
 
A similar thing happened to a friend of mine, turned out to be a little rabbit :)
 
Could be a rabbit, but I think it would be a bit unlikely and there would be obvious droppings in the garden. My money is on a rat though have to say most rat entrances I have seen have been more of a hole.

Dave
 
My friend was also thinking rat too, he lives in a town centre and there have been rats in the past in the area we assume due to restaurants and takeaways very close by. There we also no droppings found to indicate any different, all you would sometimes see is a black flash of something running under the shed.

One day he looked out of the window by chance and saw a young rabbit eating his flowers, when he went out it ran under the shed like before!

Quite frankly it could be lots of things, I think ploddles has a good idea, that or an animal camera set up haha
 
We are togs maybe a camera trap might help:)
Probably rat,look bottom edge of shed,can you get any hairs off there that might help with ID,I can see something. Beasties oft leave hairs about ,they catch on thorns in hedges barbed wire etc. good way of getting a handle on who has traveled a specific run when the ground is hard and no footprines,something like plastacine rolled pretty flat laid across the front might also yeild a footprint.

Having said all that looks like a rat too me but its hard as one hasn't got a real appreciation of scale and there are details in the pic,that look like droppings and bits of sunflower seed cases,all could be pointers.

stu
 
Caught sight of it this evening.. It is a RAT but quite cute.
This is a 100% enlargement and crop. as I spotted it up the garden, from my sitting room widow and grabbed my X30
The quality is abysmal but good enough to recognise it for what it is.
Seems she spotted me too.
Not sure the local bird catching cat will take it on as it is rather large.
TA3X4567 by Terry Andrews, on Flickr
 
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Are you going to deal with it before you have 15 rats ?
 
If there's one, you could almost guarantee, that there be several more near by. Time to take action!
 
F1.2 said:
Are you going to deal with it before you have 15 rats ?
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Not sure how? no chance of catching it myself... I suppose I will have to find the local rat catcher if there still is one?
 
The opening could be larger than needed because a dog or fox has been trying to get in after them.
I see bits of chewed plastic or something which is nest bedding - breeding.
 
Time for a visit to your local hardware/diy store for a bait box. Where there's one rat there will be more, and they're prolific breeders. Just make sure that when handling the box you wear rubber gloves at all times to avoid getting your scent on it, don't keep checking it as rats are very intelligent and very suspicious of anything new, and try to site it so no cats, dogs, birds etc can get at it. You might do a bit of colateral damage to the local mouse population but sadly that's unavoidable. Unfortunately the only 'cute' rats are pet ones.
 
Baited rat trap is my advice , humane traps mean they will come back home unless you drive them 20+ miles away each time you catch one
 
I have ordered a couple of traps and will take them for a ride to the moors.
I have also used pepper powder around the entrance which might make the move elsewhere.
 
Strong Warfarin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin

Taking the rats away will not work. They also breed at a prolific rate.

Get professional help, as they will be able to use higher strength eradication materials than you can buy.

Do it NOW!

Getting a hungry cat might assist too, but then you have to be careful with the poisons.
 
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Terrywoodenpic said:
I have ordered a couple of traps and will take them for a ride to the moors..
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Just be aware there are welfare regulations regarding releasing captured wildlife
@Cobra may know more then I do
 
In a similar situation I use those waxy blocks of rat poison. Thread some onto a piece of fencing wire, bent over so they can't be carried away, poke it well under the shed, and anchor the other end to a stick, stone, garden fork or some such. You can pull it out and check each and add more as necessary. They may not touch it for a day or two.
 
Jannyfox said:
So you're going to try to live trap rats and dump them on someone else who doesn't want or need them? Glad I don't live near you.............
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People do that. I've met someone carrying a house mouse in a Longworth type trap looking fo somewhere to release it. I told him he was a cruel b*****d dumping it away from its family and friends where it would soon die ;-) . Some animal charities do it too with foxes, at least around Leeds.
 
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Although you have already ordered live trap do please consider killing traps. Sometimes they catch the leg of a rat and cause suffering but a lot, if not most of the time, they kill cleanly and quickly. The only proviso is that the set trap can be kept away from other animals.

Dave
 
sphexx said:
People do that. I've met someone carrying a house mouse in a Longworth type trap looking fo somewhere to release it. I told him he was a cruel b*****d dumping it away from its family and friends where it would soon die ;-) . Some animal charities do it too with foxes, at least around Leeds.
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Hence my previous post about releasing live animals, it's not always the best thing for the creature to put it in a strange environment, can cause suffering.

Where I lived they used to release urban foxes into the countryside, saw them on early morning dogs walks, foxes inevitably moved to the villages
and scrounged bins etc because they couldn't catch their own food,. which in turn ended with them being shot or starving to death
 
Do you live anywhere near north wiltshire? I have several traps.
My neighbour has chickens, knocked down their old shed and we had about 30 large brown rats looking for somewhere else to live. They'd happily been living off the chicken feed. Pest control came in with poison next door but I have a Labrador that will eat anything. The large traps they suggested we get did nothing, either the humane or live capture. Cheeky rats could get in, take the bait and out again without getting the doors shut. One started climbing the rose bushes outside the lounge window to take residence in the eves, the rest under our cabin.

Only thing to get rid was I sat in the upstairs window with my air rifle in the evening, home made night vision on the scope which worked brilliantly. (air pistol for the one climbing the roses).

159023460.jpg

159023461.jpg

Sensor is in the tube, just push onto the end of the scope. Screen has all the battery etc in and mounts on the scope with an infra red torch on the other side.


Took over 30 out in 4 days, compared to two poisoned next door.

Milky way seems to be irresistible. I just baited the trap as before and took them out as they came for the bait.
 
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It's not always easy to humanely kill rats with an air rifle because they are tough and liable to disappear underground before dying. However, the best system I know is smearing peanut butter on a stone or brick so they cannot carry it off and then you can shoot them while feeding. This is very effective with squirrels too.
Live traps of the large wire kind are very effective and if an airgun barrel is poked through the wire the rat will helpfully chomp on it ;-) .
I used to use Fenn traps which are very effective when set in tunnels (the only legal way) but I've given up using them as my fingers aren't as good as they used to be and I found I was more likely to cat than myself than a rat :-( .
Rats are very cute and make great pets - I used to have 20,000 white rats (not pets obviously) so I would count myself an expert on their character. But you do not want to encourage them round your house and garden.
I have a few free range ducks and chickens now so I am constantly being visited by my neighbours rats looking for a good home.
 
Gremlin said:
Just be aware there are welfare regulations regarding releasing captured wildlife
@Cobra may know more then I do
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I think that other people have just about covered the killing of or release of vermin.

The one thing that makes me chuckle on a daily basis, is the fact that they are always "someone else's rats"
(If I had a £1 for every time I've heard that .... )
No one owns the rats, they are free agents.
Rats need three things, Harbourage, food, and water.
Someone else may well be supplying a better class of harbourage than " you" but a crap food supply.
If "you" are supplying a better class of food and or water, they (he) will come.
Just like "Field of dreams" ;)
 
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And when they do, they make more rats!!! :p

The one(s) that clear up the spilled bird feed live down the road somewhere. There's a stream at the bottom of the road and I suspect there is a rat housing estate down there. The bird feed is stored in a proper metal rubbish bin so they can't get at the bulk of it and just clear up what the birds drop (as do the squirrels.) Always found Snickers to be the best trap bait (and that was what the mice always went for in preference to any other chocolate bars on the same stand when a place I worked at had a small problem.)
 
Cobra said:
I think that other people have just about covered the killing of or release of vermin.

The one thing that makes me chuckle on a daily basis, is the fact that they are always "someone else's rats"
(If I had a £1 for every time I've heard that .... )
... snip ...;)
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Though I wrote "my neighbours rats" as a light-hearted aside one of my neighbours is given to putting chicken carcasses on their compost heap which I only noticed when my dogs went over fence to get them. Neighbour said " Oh, can they smell them?" ‍♂️ ‍♂️. My chicken run is near their boundary and the compost heap rats tunnel under the boundary with unerring accuracy to come up under the hen housing. So yes, the rats are my neighbours' whereas the mice and voles that I have are "mine" as I encourage them partly because I'm fond of them but mainly because the dogs love hunting them.
 
Cobra said:
I think that other people have just about covered the killing of or release of vermin.

The one thing that makes me chuckle on a daily basis, is the fact that they are always "someone else's rats"
(If I had a £1 for every time I've heard that .... )
No one owns the rats, they are free agents.
Rats need three things, Harbourage, food, and water.
Someone else may well be supplying a better class of harbourage than " you" but a crap food supply.
If "you" are supplying a better class of food and or water, they (he) will come.
Just like "Field of dreams" ;)
Click to expand...


Exactly... rats are everywhere If you get rid of one lot, you just make space for more to move in. there is no way you could stop them .
They seem to be living off scraps from my bird table and probably worms as I have rather a lot. so I am going to stop feeding them for a while. I do not know where they are getting the water. I must look to see if they are entering a drain somewhere with out a cover. I know where they are living and will seal them off one entrance at a time.
I do not know how far a rat will care to travel to get their daily drink. I have replaced the outside tap as it tended to drip.

They will breed wherever they are, and will fill all the available suitable territory.
I suspect that they have been cleared from somewhere near by, and my spot was the next best they could find.
I must Just make sure it is no longer welcoming.
 
Availability of food is the main thing that encourages them.
 
sphexx said:
It's not always easy to humanely kill rats with an air rifle because they are tough and liable to disappear underground before dying. However, the best system I know is smearing peanut butter on a stone or brick so they cannot carry it off and then you can shoot them while feeding. This is very effective with squirrels too.

Live traps of the large wire kind are very effective and if an airgun barrel is poked through the wire the rat will helpfully chomp on it ;-) .
Click to expand...

15-20 yards, easy head shot, but then I target shoot most weekends.
I had tried every wire trap type the local country stores sold , set on their trail between the two houses (tunnel under fence) and every trap the rats proved too big for and could get the bait out without getting trapped in. We sat and watched them go in and out before shooting. The last was almost the size of a small lobster pot, with a cone and trap door further in.

Local pest disposal bloke said poisoning was the only way he'd use.
 
Byker28i said:
15-20 yards, easy head shot, but then I target shoot most weekends.
I had tried every wire trap type the local country stores sold , set on their trail between the two houses (tunnel under fence) and every trap the rats proved too big for and could get the bait out without getting trapped in. We sat and watched them go in and out before shooting. The last was almost the size of a small lobster pot, with a cone and trap door further in.

Local pest disposal bloke said poisoning was the only way he'd use.
Click to expand...
Are you claiming your rats in Swindon are bigger than our rats in Yorkshire? Maybe you just have puny traps
 
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