3 more down

[hugme]

got one more yesterday evening, 2 more last night....

People have given a lot of advice and I have read a lot online.... most of it I didn't follow and it turns out didn't work for me anyway...

myth 1: rats are smart, they will figure out where your traps are and avoid those locations

I haven't seen this to be true... I've gotten at least one every night since I started 3 nights ago... read about my tricks below

myth 2: Put out meat for rats and seeds or nuts for mice...

I use peanut butter, they love it. It's very aromatic so they can smell it from far away.

myth 3: rats are smart enough to avoid traps which have been used before due to the smell of the old rat.

nope, used some of the traps several times now.

here is what I've found works best

use peanut butter
figure out their path (look for droppings) and put the traps near it
put the food UNDER the trigger so they have to push on the trigger to get to it
place the trigger in the middle of the spring bar so that if it's pushed in either direction it goes off.

hopefully this won't last much longer and I am close to getting all of them.

Comments

[nausved.livejournal.com]

They will ONLY figure out to avoid those traps if they realize that other rats are getting hurt in them. They are considered smart because they learn quickly, not because they're all-knowing. If you think that rat intelligence is a myth, I highly recommend having a look at the all the scientific research out there that points to the contrary.

But I do agree with you about the peanut butter. There's probably not a substance on Earth that rats love more. And I would think that a trap with a rat smell would actually entice more rats to come to it, since they are very social animals.