Certainly no love lost, only hungry rodent tummies

Martin is completly right on this subject.
There will always be a presents of rodents where ever humans reside. Once the battle is won the war remains.

Well, I had to put the panties on again, to go make my 24-hour check on the traps.

Nothing was touched . . . except . . . a mouse snap trap was missing. I finally found it:



That's a downward-sloped area, right above a sloped ceiling. I had the trap set up on the flat area (near the 'ledge') up above that sloped area, as I can hear the rodents in that area. Well, I spotted the trap down at the bottom of that sloped area, with a rat (yes, definitely a good-sized rat) stuck in it and kind of flopping around. You can't see him in the pic, but he's in the upper right part of the photo.

Now, the million-dollar, five-vertebrae question . . . is it safe for my fat ass to get on my butt and scoot down that sloped area to retrieve him? Or is that a weaker area, and I should just leave him be?

I'm inclined to go with b) unless y'all give me a real feeling of confidence. I'm also aware that not all of you would be heartbroken to see me fall through that ceiling.

Whatever you do, you must set up the camera FIRST!
So we can either laugh or tell you, good job.

Go to lowes or home depot. Buy a long piece of PVC pipe. Drive a long screw through the end of it. (about 2 to 3 inches.) Use that to retrieve the rat and trap. Just slam the screw right through the rat.

Toss it if you wish. Or clean it off, and use it for the next one.

I guess this advice is a little late. But I tie off all my traps.
Even with the appropriate trap. An animal can run off if it is a bad catch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_rat

That's skip sheeting. Those 1x4's are stronger than you think. Just step where they are on top of a 2x's and it will be fine.

This

Some framer ran all over that while it was being built

You're not that fat

As an Architectural Designer, I agree with all the above.... But setup a camera, just in case.

Wait a damn minute. Aren’t you an engineer?

My bet is on it being a fat MOUSE!

Send the wife.


Tell her you’re preparing her for if you’re ever not around...




(J/k...usr & Rocket got it right.)

Well . . . update time.

I'll admit, I'm pretty poor at this. I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to creeping around in the attic and the crawl space.

The rat who was caught in the mouse trap and was flopping around at the bottom of the sloped area? Fuggit. I left him there.

I've been making regular visits to the attic. Glue traps . . . nothing. Snap traps . . . one mouse trap was snapped one day, but nothing was in it. I took the mouse trap out of the fight, leaving just rat traps up there, which have remained untouched. I finally stepped up my game with bait packs, which I didn't really want to use indoors, but I figured if I was gonna leave that rat at the bottom of the sloped area, obviously I wasn't too concerned about dead rodents inside. To date, though, the only thing that I appear to have killed up in the attic is that one rat in the mouse trap.

Last weekend I went down to the crawl space and deployed a few divisions: rat traps, glue traps and bait packs. I haven't been down there since (might go in the next couple of days) to check on it.

However, in the last few days there has been a REMARKABLE decrease in the noise overhead. In fact, I can't even say for certain that I've heard ANY rodent noise over the last day or so. So that's giving me hope, since I was hearing them up there many times a day before all this.

Today I swapped out the bait in my rat traps up in the attic. Out with the peanut butter, and in with a duckmeat dog treat in one trap, and a beef dog treat in another.

And . . . I found this, courtesy of that fuckstain from Comcast and the crew that replaced the air conditioner last year:



Mmmhmmm. I deployed a piece of history and some silicone to block it off at least temporarily:



Our dog runs in this area so I can't do anything too radical . . . but I think I'll get a covered bait trap, in case we've got them running around the house in that area.

What a pain in the ass.

Looks like the AC guy did pretty good, but that Comcast guy was the stain you mentioned. That Plastic sign isn't going to cut it, they will chew through that.
You need some more of that mesh metal fabric and some wire to close that off. When you want that Rat carcass and Trap out of your Attic, Lola and i can take care of it for you.

You steel wool to plug your holes. It is the only thing they will not chew thru. The just one bite from amazon is great no stinky mess to clean up they bleed from within and die most of the time in there nest. We found a few sets of bones but it never stunk like decon mice do when they die.