Rat Horror!

[hawkmoon1704]

While eating some beans on toast with my partner in the diner we saw a rat in the garde no less than 5times visit a piece of bread thrown out for the birds!! Now I'm quite comfortable with the rat paying us a visit but the missus was going egg shaped.
Now I wonder what to do. Do we trap him humanely if we can or go hell for leather and poison the little fella?
Whats the general feeling?

[JP]

I think the saying is your'e never 20 foot away from a rat, I like watching Rats they have fasinating behaviour and it is a wild animal surely it will add to the interest of the bird table if it was a squirrel would it be different? or a Hedgehog or a Fox? RIGHTS FOR RATS thats what i say lol Also if their is one there will be others, get rid of that one and another will probably follow. They are coming because you have provided them with a source of food, try having a wider based bird table with an edge around the top to prevent food scraps falling off and feed a seed based diet to the birds with may be Fat balls in a fat ball cage, if you get rid of the bread on the grass the missus wont see it either that or give it a name she may warm to it

[naturelover]

dont be too hard on him he is only trying to servive like you and me,i have them down the bottom of the garden,best thing is dont through bread out on the floor get yourself a bird table,makes it harder for mr ratty to get at it,if you have one rat i bet you have more,please dont kill it with bait if you knew how they die its horrid and they dont deserve a death like that.

[demicav]

I can't say enough that poison is a bad thing. It gets into the food chain and can affect other animals. Unless you're overun I wouldn't worry too much, you're never that far from rats anyway. I agree with what's been said. Try not to throw food on the floor ect. Chances are he'll move on when there's no free meals going.

[Rats]

Hi, as you can probably guess from my user name, I love rats! I have 13 (fancy rats) as pets, but that's another story! Anyway, as the other's have said, the rat is only trying to survive, like all the other wild animals and he is just an opportunist, who is very grateful, for the extra food you are giving him! Please don't use any horrible poisons, because apart from being cruel, they do get into the food chain, when another animal eats the dead rat. So it could poison other animals too.
I think your best bet is to try to find a way of feeding the birdies that a rat can't get to..Maybe you could try to find a rat proof bird table of some kind. I just tried looking on Google for you, but couldn't find one.

[hawkmoon1704]

I agree with all your comments, I like him and he can stay for as long as he dont enter the house through the loo! And I'm against poison for those reasons, its not a nice way to go.
To me he looked clean n healthy and all he was doing was cleaning up some scraps left by the pigeons lol. And the missus has already bin calling him Ratty. It was cool watching him run to the bread, grab some then turn and look at us through the patio doors then hop away to eat it. I was laughing as he did this but that got me into bother (didnt stop me though).
I think he'll be ok if he doesn't enter the house and doesn't make anymore daylight appearences lol