I was going down to the garage to work on some tunes and I disturbed this giant rat! He was as big as a squirell! I have been out there practicing befor and heard one moving around, making noise but didn’t realize how big it was! He was as big as a big squirell! A small dog! I can’t go practice now! Good God! The dog won’t even go out there with me!!! And we live in the burbs! It must be one of those Mexican rats!
Awww…I love rats so much. Not only are they cute, they’re quite intelligent, and very resourceful. Sometimes I wish people were more like rats.
Please don’t poison it or use metal snap traps.
I am terrified of rats, which I know is silly, but I am none the less. I hope it finds other lodgings soon 
We use to have visits to the Skye’s kennel runs by big old rats.
The smart ones visited Buddy’s run. They had a trail to his food bowl and water bowl. He obviously had invited them on in.
Some got the runs confused or were brave or stupid and went into one of the other Skyes runs.
Kate would never leave a mark on the bodies. They would just be dead.
Tipper thought they were tasty. I’d find tails,etc. as evidence of the snack.
The others must have just chased them out(or swallowed them whole) since there was never any “evidence”.
I have waged war on the things on occasion. They are too great a source of disease, not to mention the damage they do to the wood/wiring in a house.
(I did paint one in the foreground of a painting I did once. He was sitting on a rafter in the barn in the foreground, so the whole picture was of the barn’s interior, from his perspective.
This much I can promise you: rats are more terrified of you.
They just wanna be left alone.
I know, which is why it’s so silly to be afraid of them. Mice don’t bother me at all, but I really can’t take rats. We have one in our basement and I won’t even go down there because it’s there. :roll: It’s not even all that big, and I’m sure if I thought about it, I would think it’s cute, but I would rather not get close enough to find out. 
VB, does it have a food source out there, or is it just nesting there and going out for meals?
I read something interesting a while back about a bird sanctuary that was having trouble with rats coming in and eating the seeds put out for the birds. They solved the problem by spraying the seeds with hot pepper extract. Birds don’t have capsicin detectors, so it doesn’t bother them, but the rats don’t like it. (And neither do squirrels.) I think they just boiled up a bunch of hot peppers, let the water cool down, strained it, and put it into spray bottles. If you can figure out where your little pal is living, you might be able to just spray the area with hot pepper extract.
Of course, there’s always live trapping. (It’s not a good idea to kill rats around the home, even if you’re willing to, as all the fleas then leave the body looking for a new host, and fleas are a major disease vector.)
Just be happy it’s not a skunk. Our neighbor in Marina had six or seven living under her house, and had to hire a guy to get rid of them. He’d put out a live trap, and every time she noticed that one had gotten caught, she’d call him, and he’d come out and relocate it. It took a couple of weeks to get the whole crew. I got rid of a skunk under our tool shed by tossing mothballs under it and blocking up all the entrances but one. That didn’t work for the neighbor. I wonder how rats feel about mothballs.
We had a possum living behind some wooden crates in the garage for a while. We didn’t even know about it for some time. It left quite a mess. We had several come into the house, too. We finally had to quit leaving the doors open for the cats. Chasing a possum out of the house is quite a task–mostly because they don’t seem to be real bright. I’m not sure how we’d have handled a skunk.
Live trapping works great. I had a bad rat problem a few years back, and thats how we got rid of them (in conjuction with releasing our fearless killer kitty on the bastards 
). They seem to REALLy love Sweet & Low packets, so those are good baits, the traditional cheese bait works well too but tends to spoil a little too fast. Once you catch the little(or humungous) bugger, you can just drive hm far away and release him out in the wild. I was tempted to feed them to my pet snakes but decided not to do so in fear of passing on poison to my snakes if the rats had chanced upon a little rat poison in their time.Well, happy hunting.
-Mike
Perhaps instead of the rats being called bastards, the person who allowed the cat to kill them could be called as such, with an extra qualifier: stupid.
i’m scared of rats too.
years back, i went picking the dump for scrap metal, there were plenty rats, but i never saw any.
but my mind was on the scrap metal, not on the rats, i was a good picker.
still, i find this very strange, all the other people saw plenty rats.
Aw shucks, thank you. I have been trying so hard to be a person, now I can just relax and be myself.
Aw, no offense towards rat lovers or the rats themselves. No need for hostility either. I was just letting nature take it’s course.
Not to mention, those little guys were eating our cat’s food in the garage.
The thing about having cats around, is the rodents tend to find somewhere else to live anyway, so they needn’t get eaten, it’s more proactive.
Cran, I also like rats, and if I had a neighbor rat which I were certain had had its tubes tied I’d be less concerned, but I wouldn’t care to entertain the notion of a population boom.
I would go for a trap and release.
I’m 100% in agreement with using the humane traps and then releasing the wild darling far, far, away.
I have four pet rats so its easy to see where my sympathies lie. They are awesome pets, as intelligent as a dog or cat and very affectionate. BUT! If I got a wild rat in the house tomorrow I would have to do something to get rid of it…for one thing, if you have one you know that soon you will have two, and then three and so on. Plus, in my case there is the fear that it would bring something into the house that might make my little colony sick.
We had a major mouse problem last winter. Went out and got humane mouse traps. We caught 18!!! of the little guys in one day!! Yikes! Then it sort of dwindled over the next two weeks down to nothing. So..the humane traps are very efficient. You just gotta remember to check them regular..obviously!
I have a mouse called Ham which I can manipulate with my fingers. Basically what I do is put my thumb or middle finger into the hole on its stomach.
Now I have two more mice on the way home; they’re both named Judy. Black/gray Judy and white Judy.
If you can wiggle your fingers, then you can surely make it run up and down your arm, eat some pet foods, and play in your hands like a real mouse.
Yes, I’m affiliated with the company “D”; crystal people themselves told me tha ////silence//////ratratrat///‘&%#’"anae4t4577–JUDYTHEMOUSE.
bunny, ever considered making the rat your pet? Feed him and see what happens. You’ll perhaps come to like him! 
Put him to work!
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/01/15/rat.land.mines.reut/index.html
Best wishes,
Jerry
Maybe in Cranberry’s living room? He seems to like it a lot.
These guys stand up on thier back legs and show their teeth. I don’t think cats would mess with them.
He would go well with the roaches and silverfish.