Cheese or Peanutbutter and traps would be best if you don't want them rotting in your walls.
Find a place where you know that they travel and place the traps.
I put one in my attic and within 30 minutes I got my first dead rat. Within 2 days, no more rats.

Warfarin and such poisons cause the rats to hemorrage and dehydrate, and they will seek a source of water. If your winters are variable in weather, ie. some days when the snow and ice melt from the sun and moderate temps, the rats will go out to die. Even if they stay in the house, they will quickly dry out. I have found carcasses that are mummified. There may be the odd one that dies in the walls, and a very short period when there may be a slight odour, but that quickly passes.

I put the poison in large squares of foil wrapped and twisted like candy kisses, and stick them in the suspended ceilings and other crevices. That's the way the pros do it.

Ted

Please don't use poison! If they die in the walls it will cause you a stinky mess. If they die outside you might inadvertently cause someone's pet to die from secondary exposure to the poison if it eats the dead rat.

The only way I have ever found to get rid of rats/mice are snap traps. They actually sell a rat sized one. Bait them with PB in an area that you can get to.

Good luck! I had to deal with the same thing this winter.

Hmmm....Sounds a lot like diddlydudette and robinwise....rats, squirrels all the same.
Could this be a case of dual personality? You decide.

For what it's worth, I just found a dead mouse in my basement that didn't make its way outside before meeting its fate. I guess I'll never know how many make it out, but I think I'd rather NOT know.

Personally, worrying about neighbors' pets is pretty low on my list. I don't think domestic animals should roaming around unsupervised anyway... even if fenced in.

Superraton, have you called an exterminator?

I hate rats. I would burn the house down. Look at it this way, You get to build exactly what you want then ! :)

I would call in a professional company immediately! We've had mice and been able to deal with them using glue traps, but that only worked when they came out of the walls into the kitchens. Just one mouse really smells horrible, so I can't imagine what it would be like to have a bunch of dead rats in the walls! They can apparently do a great deal of damage, and there are sanitary issues as well. This is one of those things I think it's just worth it to call in the professionals for. They will also help figure out where they are coming in and help you solve the problem so you won't go through this again. Good luck!!!

DCON, works wonders...

Keep your pets away from it.

Get a jack russell for house dog.Thats what they were bred for.Mine even has like a rat head mark on her back,It has ears,jaw,even has a little nose on end.Its about 6" long.So you know shes in it deep.This dog got 5 groundhogs when she was 1 year old.Killed them.Its good for us because we have registered texas longhorns and tennessee walker horses we cannot afford to lose a cow to a ground hog hole causing broken leg.

Use rat snap traps against the walls where they may be running, such as against both inner and outer walls. Orient the traps perpendicular to the wall (bait side against wall). Bait some with a little peanut butter, and others with a cotton ball scented with a couple drops of vanilla (this gets the ones that are nesting rather than feeding.) If you want to place some near the soffit vents, ducttape the trap to the end of a strip of wood first, and put the whole thing down there. Good luck.

Raisins are great for baiting traps. Our varmits could eat of all the peanut butter without springing the trap, but one tug on a raisin...

Get the jack russel!Might not get into your joist area, but they are cool dogs!

We just tore out some cheap paneling in a 1/2 bath and the only insulated wall in that area was covered with mouse urine and feces. God only knows what toxins were released in the air.

If you can stand the smell of dead rodents, go ahead and poison yourself, but be prepared to disinfect if needed. And as the previous poster said, try to find out where they are entering.

My Dad used to make a dough out of plaster, flour and water and form abt 1" balls, dry the balls of dough and then place them along the bottom of the wall. The rats would eat the dough balls and die of dehydration. We only had a problem in the barn though and my Dad was concerned with poisons around the other animals and us kids.

new guy, You didn't really want superraton to "poison yourself", did you? I was absolutely petrified over a bat in my dining room and might have taken your advice at that point!!!

My limited and terrified experience was cemented by the use of "glue boards". I found a live squirrel struggling to free himself. I wanted to get the scissors and try to cut him free. My husband thinks these boards are great and won't harm the dogs. I think of them as a sort of lazy cat buffet.

Moral of the story: City girls should just stay there!

I wish you luck with the eradication of your critters. Please let us know what worked for you.

In a former home, we had a terrible mouse problem, we were overrun. We called a well-known pest control company, they came out and baited the house, and within 24 hours we not only had no more mice, but no dead ones in the walls. (At least none that we ever detected.)

I would call a pro. In fact, I did, and it worked fine.

I use d-con bait trays mixed with peanut butter for rats and squirrels.
You can also mix plaster of Paris into peanut butter and leave it out for them, but d-con is a sure kill.

I agree with the Dcon. It's the only effective methods that I have found for getting rid of the mice that were in my house. I was worried about it because I have dogs. One of my dogs occassionally catches a mouse. I tried everything but poison because of the dogs, but nothing worked. I talked to my vet about my options and he told me to go ahead and use the Dcon. He said that a mouse weigh about 30 grams. The amount of Dcon necessary to kill a mouse would not harm a 25 pound dog. Depending on the size of the rats and the animals in your neighborhood, the same might be true in your situation. You might want to ask a vet. The vet did, however, stress to put the Dcon in a place inaccessible to my dogs. He said that dogs typically die from eating the Dcon directly, not by eating a poisoned rodent.

This thread hasn't had any new posts lately, so here's mine. It's actually a little funny.

I had a squirrel run up the exterior brick on my fireplace where it pokes through the soffit and roof, and chew a hole through the soffit and into the attic. I saw it come out of the hole and run away. I put up the ladder and tacked a piece of wood trim over the hole, meaning to do a proper repair after the weather got warmer. Two days later I looked up and saw that the new wood had been chewed in half. It looked like that creature was bound and determined to make a nest up there.

That night I was kept awake by the squirrel running around in the attic right over my bed. This attic is less than 5 feet high at the center, and so is very hard to get around in. I decided to try and get that squirrel myself rather than call an exterminator. I happened to have a spring loaded rat trap (an industrial - sized version of a mousetrap). I screwed a piece of plywood to the edge of it and attached it to the underside of the soffit right by the hole in such a manner that anything going in or out would trip it. I set the trap without any bait. A few hours later - WHAP!!! It sounded like a gunshot. I went outside and saw no squirrel. No sound from the attic. By this time I had gived up and called the exterminator. He took $250 and put a live catch trap in the attic baited with a cracker and peanut butter. He left and never came back! I went into the attic over a month later and found the trap unsprung. No squirrel either.

The only thing I can think of is I must have scared the devil out of that squirrel. I repaired the hole and put some hardware cloth over the soffit around the chimney. I've had no problems since.

I have already put out the poison and the have went n the walls and died it smell so bad until I don't know how long it can take the smell please tell me what I need to do

I am amazed that as old as this is not one person has the correct answer! You have to find where they are getting in and block the entry point with steel wool or some other steel bolted in to stop them from gaining entry. Otherwise you will forever be trapping and or poisoning every cold snap.

John Dozier, this is such a simple solution to more rats. After my mom died, my husband and I drove out there to remodel the bathroom before putting the house on the market. We found out from my brothers, who live in the area, that rats got in the house and died there quite often. There was a hole in the roof which also caused dry wall damage. Nobody ever repaired it! My mom had the money to do this so I just don't understand.

My sister, who lived about 40 miles away, also had rats in the walls and tried numerous things to get rid of them. Finally she bought an inexpensive ultrasound gadget that you plug into an outlet to get rid of rodents. It works great for her.

Diane

I too have a similar problem, but possibly a little more complicated. Rats can be heard knawing in the ceiling/floor between the first floor and basement. There is no obvious entry from outside, except for a dryer vent, which I covered with hardware cloth. The only visible sign of any activity occurred under a bathroom sink in the basement, where bags of bar soap were decimated. This cabinet is a good distance from where they can be heard, meaning they somehow have the run of the walls. I tried glue traps, and the ROUS proudly left a beautiful two footed print with tail, just to add fuel to the fire. It was definitely a Norway rat, huge, and unphased by my trap. I called two exterminators, one was a friend who said the drier vent was the only apparent access, the other said he couldn't do any thing that I couldn't do cheaper and offered no additional insight into possible entry points (didn't charge me either for 1.5 hours spent looking around). The friend put out some bait which lead me to believe we had won, when no more activity was heard for about six months or so, with a smell two weeks after, and finally, a swarm of flies, (no kidding) by the tens of thousands. I continue to feed them pb under the sink in spring traps that no matter how I arrange or set, they are always triggered and eaten. I now included additional poison under the sink, but it hasn't been touched, nor the spring traps since adding the poison station (I guess it is scarey and new). I still here them/it under my bed in the floor knawing most mornings, but I'm helpless to counterstrike. Except for perhaps unknown underground tunnels leading through the brick walls (not likely), neither I nor anyone else can find how access is gained. I was told that this type of rat wouldn't be able to gain access from the roof, hmmm? There would likely be other locations accessible throughout the house if this were the case, and there would be evidence. I have thought about loading a shotgun with squirrel or rabbit shot and firing off a few rounds into the ceiling from below when I here activity, but then the repair work would probably be as much as just tearing out the ceiling to investigate in the first place. I have never seen any evidence for rats, outside of the bathroom cabinet and constant knawing, but I am beyond aggregated and would appreciate any suggestions available. I'm leaning towards the earlier suggestion to just burn it down.

questecho - We had norway rats in our detached garage at our last place (found out the kind old neighbor lady was FEEDING THEM). Anyways after trying everything (including baiting them, then picking them off with a pellet gun when they visited our pond) we bought an electronic rat zapper. Baited with peanut butter we were able to get all of the ones that frequented our property. Since then we've also had luck with it getting mice. The rats are pretty smart so I think at the outset we may have placed it baited but off for a few days to get them accustomed to it.

Questeocho,

We had a plumber do a fog test to determine whether there are any gaps in the plumbing. Where we live, Norway rats usually come up through the sewer and find their way into the walls through a breach. They will also gnaw through Fernco (heavy rubber) caps if a plumber used it to cap off a pipe that is no longer used. The fog test is excellent and you might do it to rule the plumbing out. Unfortunately, our fog test came out clean and we're actually thinking about removing a plaster and lathe ceiling in a pristine dining and living room. Bottom line, you have to find out how they're getting in.