Packed up the car and was ready to go up to our high-country home, when I saw that the tenacious roof rat/rats has/have chewed another hole in the ceiling of the garage to go up to the attic. So, postpone the trip until the battle comes to the conclusion, hopefully in my favor.
I have set the electronic rat zapper in the attic, and got a small young rat, and a teenage one. The presumably big daddy/mommy rat is just too smart, and left a lot of rat droppings around the trap, but would not enter it. Attempts to plug up the entrance hole seemed to work, until I saw the new hole this morning in a different corner of the garage.
So, if it refuses the clean and humane dispatch by the electronic zapper, out come the traditional spring traps. If that fails, I will buy some glue traps.
C'est la guerre.
It's been almost 2 weeks. I guess I need to provide the interested readers with a follow up.
So, the rats chewed a new ceiling hole to go to/from the garage to the attic. The rat zapper trap set on the garage floor was shunned, although I did get two juvenile rats earlier in the attic.
I mounted 3 snap traps on a pole, and erected it up so that the rats would hit them as they traveled down from the hole in the garage ceiling at night. Roof rats are nocturnal. They hide during the day, and venture out for food at night.
The next morning, found all traps set off, but no rats! Darn, these traps were meant for mice, and I would need beefy ones for rats. Bought 2 rat-sized traps, and repeated the set up.
Next day, traps were not set off. So, they did get down, but how? Found a 3rd hole yet. The rats were smart, and abandoned the old hole, and chewed themselves a new one in the ceiling, near the wall.
Set new traps near that 3rd hole. Next day, found no trap was set off. Wow! How did they evade it? They did get down, because the hole chewed off the garage door bottom seal was enlarged!
Changed the arrangement to make it more difficult for them to get past the traps at the ceiling hole. Also, bought more traps, and set new traps at the hole chewed through the garage door bottom seal, with multiple traps inside as well as outside the door.
The next morning, found out that they still managed to tiptoe through the traps at the ceiling hole. However, the traps set at the garage door bottom seal were impossible to bypass and stayed intact. They knew not to crawl through that hole. But how did they get out?
A check around the garage found that they chewed through a metal wire mesh at a ventilation hole. My garage wall is of block construction, with 4 ventilation holes covered with a wire mesh. The mesh is fine and similar to that used on screen doors. The rats chewed a 2" diameter hole through that metal mesh. Holly Molly!
So, I rearranged the traps at the ceiling hole once more, and also set a trap outside the hole in the wire mesh.
The next day, found that they managed to push a trap out of the way at the ceiling hole, but set off the trap at the wire mesh. The trap was dragged about 2 feet from where it was, but no rats! Wow, must be a big rat that could extricate itself from the snap trap! Holly Molly!
So, I fixed up the set up at the ceiling hole once more, and set up the trap at the wire mesh again. After a couple of days, saw no sign that there was traffic, so I covered up the holes and removed the traps. Apparently, the big rat was not killed, but hurt by the trap that it ran away for good.
So, is it a happy ending? No, not really.
I continued to set the electric rat zapper up in the attic. The thinking is that while the big daddy or mommy rat escaped, there might still be smaller rats stuck up in the attic. Surely, I have gotten two more rats. Judging by their size, one was a juvenile and the other one a young adult.
The last rat caught was on the night before yesterday. This morning, there's no rat. I guess I don't really know for a while.
By the way, I lured them first with a bit of blue cheese set on a piece of aluminum foil. They liked the cheese so much that they tore up the foil, trying to get every bit of that cheese stuck on the foil. After that, I moved the cheese to inside the trap, and that's how I got the recent two.