San Francisco County, San Francisco Rat Control Situation:
I found you my doing a web search and happen to see that you used everything I have used, but I have not had the success you have had!!! Please David I hope you can help me. I live in San Francisco in the Oakland area on the cities eastside. I live in a gentrified neighborhood where they are tearing down abandoned homes and this is when the rat problem seemed to start. I started having a rat problem about 2010. Our street once upon a time had at least 8 feral cats, but now you hardly see any now. We at one time had zero rat problems. I have always owned cats but when my cat died in 2007 I switched to dogs. Now the male dog I have is a good ratter. I've seen him stomp rats to death. However, the problem is superseding his ability and on any given night I will see rats running around my kitchen 2 or 3 around the same times. I also think I have roof rats as I see rats upstairs that look and act different than the rats downstairs. So I'll sit and wait with my BB gun and hope I will hit one, which is rare. They almost seem to be able to read our minds and anticipate our next tactic. I have tried the Vector rat traps, baiting them with peanut butter, marshmallows chicken grease and they will eat the bait of and leave the trap untripped. I bought the cage traps, baited with dog food and the first few times did catch some but then the dilemma was I couldn't kill them like that, so resorted to poison and at first was killing them great then I started finding their droppings with the green in it and they were still running around. They soon learned to avoid the cages and poison. I brought a zapper; it was great for the mice I caught , but zero rat has been caught!! They also got into my basement by digging along the sewer line. My son has a red tailed boa ,which we thought about putting there, but it's too risky he would escape somewhere. I tried electronics and that just doesn't work at all! These ghetto rats are SUPER SMART. i went to a professional exterminator and he was telling me that this was probably one rat doing this and that some of the things I was telling him they do just wasn't true so i didn't use his exterminating services ,but, did buy the poisons from his retail store and place it as he instructed w/o relief of this problem. They steal too. When all their food sources were dried up, they came in my living room and nawed a rat head sized hole in the stiff plastic bag and stole 1/2 of a 1# bag of hard ginger candy and took it somewhere. There wasn't a trace. I stored my dog's food in a lidded tupperware container and they knawed right through that. My camera is missing, which was on my kitchen table,. Yesterday I was looking for my dish towel and they had put it under the kitchen sink as they had [artially pulled it through the kick plate., They stole paper $5 money from my son's table and it was found inside a hole in the wall. I found where they chewed through mortar so remortared those areas only for them to do again. They are destroying my home and my peace and I am almost ready to just burn this house down (figurative speech). I see them outside like squirrels looking at us and I've called the city and they have done nothing! Is my house possessed by rat demons or is this a living earthly rat infestation that can be eradicated? Can you please give me some advice and direction, please?? Thank you, Ellen
My response: I have had rats steal my camera in the past too. I think it's probably a living earthly rat infestation. You need to find out how they are getting into your house, and seal those holes shut.
San Francisco Rat Control Tip of The Week
What Equipment Do I Need To Trap A Rat?
Trapping a rat is not as difficult as it seems, provided you have the right kind of equipment. Rats are a highly intelligent household pest with prior knowledge of your unyielding intentions to either get them killed or captured. As a result of this, they will try as much as possible to run for their lives whenever they get the chance to.
For you to outsmart them and make your plans to trap them successfully, you need good quality traps set up at the spot the rats in your house pass through the most and the right process of setting these traps.
Have you decided to trap the rats in your home and you are looking for the equipment to use and the right way to go about this? The first thing you have to do to achieve your objective is to discover the exact routes of the rats in your house. These are the places you will be setting your traps once you are ready to capture them.
After that, the next thing you have to put in place is the right kind for bait. A good bait should help attract rats and not any other pest or animal in your home. If you just chose a random food substance as bait, you might end up trapping the pets in your home instead of the target pest.
After putting all of that in place, the most important piece of equipment you need to trap a rat is a good quality trap. Your choice of trap depends on whether you want to kill the rats with the trap or just trap them and later release them far away from your home.
If you choose to kill them directly with the trap, a lethal rat trap will be most appropriate. The only issue with the use of this trap is that you will have to get multiple traps and set them at different locations because this kind of trap can't trap more than one rat at a time.
On the other hand, if you choose to trap the rats and release them afterward, a one-way entry door trap will also be most appropriate. Also, while setting up either of these traps, you need to protect yourself at all times from the bacteria spread by the rats by wearing a pair of gloves and a protective mask.
