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jse



Joined: 17 Apr 1995
Posts: 1460
Location: Maui

PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 11:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I also tried those sonic repellents for mice. It seems to have worked. Had a big infestation in my garage then one in my barbecue grill. Both went away after installing those noisemakers.

Steve
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raffar



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 47

PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 11:42 pm    Post subject: Re: This is a first Reply with quote

flpnhndl wrote:
...I hope the little bastard dies a slow, painful death. I break gear, gear wears out, stuff happens with gear, but a rat eating your sail??? WTF?

It is a little known fact that most sails sleeve fabric is made of, among other things, rat bait and low grade cheese.


It happen to me too. Sorry for your loss,
R.
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windward1



Joined: 18 Jun 2000
Posts: 1400

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:02 am    Post subject: Wood Rat Family Nesting in Sail Reply with quote

I had a brand new Ezzy and stored my gear in my shed. Went to load the van for a session and noticed the draw strings on the sail bag were broken. Thought to myself, "Now that is strange. Sail and Bag are brand new!"

Got to Natural Bridges which is a family oriented park, and pulled my van in and unloaded the gear I had selected. Pulled the new sail out and it felt heavy at one end. Dropped it on the ground and a big wood rat goes running out of the end of it. She ran under the van and then took off across the parking lot. I looked around and no one else seemed to have seen it. I hoped it would not crawl into anyone's picinic basket. Then I grabbed the foot of the sail and whipped it into the air like a bed sheet to spread it for mast insertion. As I insert the mast I see the luff is all holey and chewed looking. On my brand new Ezzy! Then I notice about a dozen baby rats, with their eyes not open yet, squirming in a dozen different spots where I had shook the sail out. This is not good. So the sail made good nesting material and the dark end of a tunnel an excellent place to raise little rats.

I pulled out my SUP paddle and tried to nonchalantly sweep the little critters into the many available gopher holes around. I did not want a little kid walking by and thinking they were cute and try to pick them up or take them home. Or accuse me of animal cruelty for not 'saving' the poor little guys and gals.

Anyway I finished rigging and the sail still worked. Relatively well for having been rat infested and chewed upon.

When I got home I put up hangers in the garage and moved my better sails to there. Still need to work on de-infesting the storage shed.

This was several years ago. So you were not first.

Heard a Horned Owl close by last night . Go get 'em Owly!

Windward1
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speedysailor



Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Posts: 841

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 8:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, this definitely isn't a first. I can bore you to death for sure with all sorts of similar stories. Field mice have been the trouble in Massachusetts outside of the city. However, rats infest Cambridge and downtown Boston. I also saw a few in the house in West Virginia. They love restaurant food garbage. As to mice and sails, I found that 6.0 in my Sebastian inlet thread at the local dump. It obviously had been sitting in someone's shed and was gnawed upon. However, I was able to repair the damage which was minimal. Motorcycles are a different story. They love to chew on the wires and have caused me one expensive repair. I also have found them under the hood of a car nesting while we were in Florida. I use traps and Decon. The traps work, but I'm not sure of Decon as I haven't found a dead mouse or mole outside of a trap. By the way, the old Boston Garden was infested with rats and mice, too. During the intermission of one ice hockey game, I was out in the hallway, saw a mouse and quickly squashed it with my boot. That made a big stir in the beer guzzling crowd!!!! By the way, there's an excellent Black&White 60's foreign movie about a rat exterminator in Eastern Europe. I forgot the title. Has anyone seen it?
jse wrote:
. . . and if you are fortunate to live where you can fire a gun, 22 caliber subsonic shells work and provide for your own entertainment. Just make sure you are aware of what's downrange.

Steve
You have to be a pretty good shot to hit a rat or any other rodent with a 22. I have tried, but never succeeded. Futhermore, usually you see them indoors or near buildings which makes for a very dangerous situation. I've known of people who have been seriously injured by 22's used in the city to kill varmints. We had one on the farm in West Virginia that helped to scare away the guy who burned a cross outside one night, and it came in handy when my friend decided he had to kill a cat, but we never did kill any rats with it.
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jse



Joined: 17 Apr 1995
Posts: 1460
Location: Maui

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

speedysailor wrote:
You have to be a pretty good shot to hit a rat or any other rodent with a 22. I have tried, but never succeeded. Futhermore, usually you see them indoors or near buildings which makes for a very dangerous situation. I've known of people who have been seriously injured by 22's used in the city to kill varmints. We had one on the farm in West Virginia that helped to scare away the guy who burned a cross outside one night, and it came in handy when my friend decided he had to kill a cat, but we never did kill any rats with it.


Put me down as pretty good then Smile The trick is observation, stealth and patience. I live in a small city, but we are on the outskirts and have nothing but open space around us. Also, we have chickens - a rat magnet if there ever was one. They are content to live outside among the hens, eating their food, finding shelter in the straw that we distribute, eating their eggs once in a while. So I go out at dusk, stand behind a bush and wait. I've gotten a few, but my experience is that once you nail one, you will never get that shot again. Not sure how they do it, but it seems they communicate the danger to the rest. It's not an efficient way to kill rats to be sure, but it does offer some entertainment.

Steve
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jse



Joined: 17 Apr 1995
Posts: 1460
Location: Maui

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seriously though, I can't stress enough how bad it is to use rat poison. The end result is you end up killing their natural predators, and you might take out your or a neighbors cat as well. Much better to put up an owl house. I've seen a little screech own feed a small rat to a fledgling in one of our owl houses. Thing went down so fast I barely saw it. Just the tail disappear down it's throat like a piece of spaghetti.

Steve
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spennie



Joined: 13 Oct 1995
Posts: 975
Location: Thousand Oaks, CA

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good one, isobars!

A friend of mine's Dad got pissed at the squirrels eating his peaches, so he ran 2 wires about an inch apart through the tree and put 110 volts through them. He had to take it down when his wife was at the kitchen sink window and saw a "cute little" squirrel being electrocuted, it fell to the ground smoking.

I do not actually recommend this method. I would recommend a rat-proof enclosure for the gear, think 1/2" hardware fabric (wire mesh).

_________________
Spennie the Wind Junkie
www.WindJunkie.net
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:47 pm    Post subject: Re: This is a first Reply with quote

raffar wrote:
It is a little known fact that most sails sleeve fabric is made of, among other things, rat bait and low grade cheese.

Ya gotta stop buyin' those imported sails. Wink
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

spennie wrote:
A friend of mine's Dad got pissed at the squirrels eating his peaches, so he ran 2 wires about an inch apart through the tree and put 110 volts through them. He had to take it down when his wife was at the kitchen sink window and saw a "cute little" squirrel being electrocuted, it fell to the ground smoking.

Electric fencing system. Cheap, safe, effective for the bigger rodents like squirrels. (We have only a few squirrels, so we love 'em, but some places are plagued by them.) Dogs kept hosing down our metal garbage cans; running fence power to the cans (on non-collection days) solved that problem REAL quick!

We lost many cats and a dog to rat poison used by a nearby cotton gin years ago. It was legal, so all I could do was string up their dead rats in a hangman's noose in their office doorway.
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beaglebuddy



Joined: 10 Feb 2012
Posts: 1120

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 4:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poison may have problems with collateral damage but really it's the only thing that works.
If you live in an urban environment there probably aren't any owls around, cats well, if a stray gets it that's not really a problem, pet cats should be kept indoors.
if you don't use poison you will have rats so best then to figure out ways to keep them out from under your house and your garage and shed. Secure all the screens and door thresholds.
Glue traps can catch some, regular traps don't work because the little mice and rats will nibble the bait on the large trap and not set it off and the big rats will just wiggle out of the mouse traps if caught. You may catch a few but it's a lot of frustrating work for few results.
Shooting rats is a fun hobby but in no way is it considered control unless you make it a full time job and then the moment you let up they will be back.
That's what's so effective about poison, it's working 24/7
Same goes for gophers.
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