View Full Version : Oh, MY GOD! DAAADDDDDD!
Sparrowhawk
07-31-04, 02:04 PM
It was 3:03 am, I was already up and in the garage when I heard my daughter in the downstairs bedroom cry out;
Oh, MY GOD! DAAADDDDDD!
I rushed into her room and she is standing on her bed;
"There's a rat in here," she said, and I turned on the light and the hump of grayish brown fur jumped about a foot and into a corner of her room.
She left the room, and I geared up for battle..
The way it jumped made me think it was a Kangaroo Rat and for some reason I would much battle with a Kangaroo Rat (are they an endangered spices? If not, this one is!) then the other type. Hadn't seen rats around her since two years ago when we took down a large palm tree in the backyard.
Took just about everything out of that room and no rat.
Okay so maybe that thing left while I was loading up, the m60, my K-bar and Sword. I had left the patio door open just in case it wanted to leave while I was getting my rat eliminator stuff together.
I remember those 2 foot long rats along the Sung Thu Bon River in Vietnam, so I know rats can get feisty unless you knock them out cold with the first blow. But they are also afraid of humans and that's a good thing.
Anyway, she said she woke up and saw the rat climbing along the corner of her room. But the way it jumped made me think it might be a Kangaroo Rat, didn't catch a glimpse of its tail, but daughter said the rat's tail was long.
So I got some bait out in the garage just in case, and going out to buy some RAT Traps.
Any hints on how to catch these things?
Didn't know regular rats could jump, but I guess if it’s scared anything will jump.
Funny story...you could get a cat ....
thedrifter
07-31-04, 04:09 PM
A little excitement today Cook.....LOL...
I did to....I became a aunt for the ninth time today(my side)Roger 's side made them never to call me aunt, when some where the same age as me...LOL....He is a big boy.....9lbs 5oz...22 1/2 long.......
Ellie
Sparrowhawk
07-31-04, 05:00 PM
Originally posted by thedrifter
A little excitement today Cook.....LOL...
I did to....I became a aunt for the ninth time today(my side)Roger 's side made them never to call me aunt, when some where the same age as me...LOL....He is a big boy.....9lbs 5oz...22 1/2 long.......
Ellie
Congrads....
That critter disappeared! But, I will get him.
HardJedi
07-31-04, 06:08 PM
get a really big trash can, with slick sides, and put no liner in it. then set it up somewhere the rat can jump into it. ( like near a shelf) put some food in, and there ya go. Least, it always works pretty well for barn rats.
Sparrowhawk
07-31-04, 06:54 PM
Think I'll try that... good idea.
Then I can tie its legs and hands and stake it out into the ground in the middle of the backyard, pour syrup all over it and let the ants have a feast.
That way the other rats might get the hint and stay out of the house..
Or tie a rope around its neck and hang it from the front porch... and invite the neighborhood kids to shoot their BB guns at it...
LMAO
Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
Think I'll try that... good idea.
Then I can tie its legs and hands and stake it out into the ground in the middle of the backyard, pour syrup all over it and let the ants have a feast.
That way the other rats might get the hint and stay out of the house..
Or tie a rope around its neck and hang it from the front porch... and invite the neighborhood kids to shoot their BB guns at it...
LMAO
In Nam, we would use a "have a heart" trap to catch some big rats. Don't know what kind of rats were in Vietnam, but they were big. A guy in our unit actually got bit by one of these things while he was sleeping.
If we caught one we would soak it with gasoline, someone would light a match then open the door and POOF!!!! no more rat.
Smaller rats would be drown with their babies in fire barrels.
Sparrowhawk
07-31-04, 08:53 PM
telling his folks about how Big the RATS were, that one rat had grabbed a hold of a Marine and was dragging the Marine by the leg into the river's banks, when he had to fight it off with a machete...
LOL
hrscowboy
08-01-04, 06:21 AM
You gotta admit some of those damn rats where pretty damn big over there Cook. But i dont ever recall seeing one that big. LOL
Sparrowhawk
08-01-04, 02:19 PM
A family of them, caught one last night with a rat trap. A baby one, so there must be more..
It's all out war....
Been feeding birds out in back, and they must have been drawn to the seed, but for them to venture into the garage was their mistake.
Time for BLOOD!
Even though you detest cats, the time has come for you to go buy the biggest cattttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
cats will keep mice/rats away. TRUST ME
TracGunny
08-01-04, 04:07 PM
...there are five (5) species Kangaroo rats listed on the California endangered species list...
http://www.endangeredspecie.com/states/ca.htm
yellowwing
08-01-04, 05:36 PM
Forget cats, many people swear by ferrets. A ferret is very territorial and any vermin trying to enter its AO is dead. This little bugger is bigger, quicker, smarter, and meaner than your average rat.
radio relay
08-01-04, 07:10 PM
Ah, "nam" rat stories.... I saw a rat sooo big... etc, etc.
How about the one, I'm sure didn't only "happen" in one of the towers surrounding Camp Hoa Long (5th Comm BnHQ). Wherein a "really big" rat corners the FNG in the tower. His M-16 is in the oposite corner, and the combat wombat... er rat, won't let the poor FNG move (of course, he's also an REMF, which makes it even worse). However, he was able to get on the phone back to the Corporal of the guard, who comes out, shoots the rat, and rescues the FNG "just as it was crouched and ready to go for the kill". Big, hungry "nam" rats like nothing better than dining on fresh FNG meat.
Now that's a mighty BIG rat... story. :)
(actually did watch some rats, and other things, eating a dead water buffalo that had been killed either by a mine or a booby trap, on the valley side of hill 244, along Charlie Ridge. Took them about a week to pick the carcass clean)
To get to 5th Comm HQ, you had to go across this small marshy area before you got to the main gate. When the monsoon season started, the critters in this marsh would get a lot more active, and come out onto the road that was basically just fill dirt which had been tamped down and oiled. Bugs on the road would be followed by frogs on the road, eating the bugs, and then rats on the road, eating the frogs. After a few days of six-by's, jeeps, and other traffic squishing these critters, the road would be covered with a smelly, slippery muck comprised of mud, bug, frog, and rat guts. It got so bad that we actually lost a six-by, that slid off the road into the marsh.
The flying roaches (that also would bite), the huge, grey centepedes that were about a foot long, with pink legs, and stingers on each end, the big black scorpions, that looked more like lobsters with stingers than anything else, and the three foot 30 lb rats... made for quite a menagerie in the hootches, and bunkers.
We'd do the samething with the rats, if we cought them. Burn 'em, that is. You had to kill them that way to make sure you got their fleas, too. Or so I was told.
Rock Apes, were fun up on Monkey Mountain. A cobra was killed that was found in a bunker on hill 950... Leeches were in the streams and river at the base of the hill, too. Ants, etc....
I remember reading a story on a website of a Corpsman, whose first casualty was a Marine who was bitten by a poisonous insect, or snake. The poor guy never knew exactly what had killed his first patient, when he got to the bush. A buddy of mine, was bitten by a cockroach, at a little trc-27 site, up by the Rockpile, and it got infected real bad. A lot of things ccould kill you, beside bullets, in that God foresaken country!
Radio Relay........
Excellent run down on "Nam critters.
Those huge grey centipedes you talk of would make chills run up my spine.
2 of us on guard duty in a bunker one night in DaNang watched one crawl in front of us.
I slipped out my trusty bayonette and chopped it into 3 or 4 pieces. The result was 3 or 4 centipede pieces crawling in different directions. This thing was about 3 feet (actually 8 inches) long.
We burned rats not to get rid of the fleas so much as to purge the anger of these things terrorizing us in our hooches late at night.
Of course, there was plenty of poagy bait for them to feed on late at night when we slept. If there was not crumbs all over the place we might have never saw one.
My Nam rat story, "They were 3" ( between the eyes)" and after catching them in a BIG rat trap which was staked to the ground we'd beat then with an e-tool..
SPARROWHAWK,
You live in the best area of rat killers in the world. Snakes! No, I am not talking about rattlesnakes, but the gopher or king snakes. Get you about a 3' long one. You won't have any more problems. I had two of them when I lived in Vista, Calif.. Of course the wife would not go out of the house until I came home. Go figure. Have fun.
hrscowboy
08-02-04, 01:09 AM
cook bait them traps with peanut butter them suckers love peanut butter.
HardJedi
08-02-04, 09:12 AM
Cowboy is right. I think they like it so much cause it has such a strong smell. I have used popcorn and peanut butter in several rodent traps. works like magic.
fulmetaljackass
08-02-04, 11:55 AM
And make sure it's a trap. Those guys just love the poison. I caught a couple of what I thought were darn ugly mice with glue traps in my apartment once, and from what I found later they were probably young rats.
After I caught those two (and they had gnawed themselves apart trying to get off the glue traps), my food was still being gotten into. I put out some poison. Whatever it was was eating this stuff like candy. I'd put out a pack of that stuff a day and it would be gone the next morning....all of it. Then toward the end of that week, I was about to take a shower and I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I pulled back the curtain and a rat as big as a small cat jumped out and climbed up into the hole in the wall where the sink pipe came out. It lingered there for a little bit and I could see its paw and tail, so I knew I wasn't imagining how big it was. I went and got my blowgun and was shooting darts down into the hole at it, but I couldn't really get a good angle as it had climbed further down the hole. When I came back to the apartment a couple weeks later (yeah, I was really that scared of the rat......actually, went on a trip to visit some family), there was the faint reek of dead rodent in my bathroom.....but I didn't mind because I knew what it was and it was the smell of victory!