OMG rat in my garden!!

[EDmummy]

Just saw a rat in my garden, near the house. What can I do?! Will the Council help?!

[Peckhampam]

If you are a council tenant -yes. If not you have to get someone in from a pest control company.

[Sanne Panne]

If you own as a leaseholder, call your management company. If you rent, call your landlord. If you're a freeholder, call Rentokil ;) Rat in garden doesn't mean rat in house but have the under-floorboard area checked for droppings. (you'll have heard them if they're in your building though)

[EDmummy]

Thought as much. Think the attraction is my next door neighbour's very run down garden. They are housing assoc tenants but haven't been living there for about 3 months.

[Sanne Panne]

Yes long grass is attractive. Worth acting soon as they're not in your house. They're not likely to spend a lot of time indoors in summer though I think (but I'm not sure).

[Saila]

Lock your cat flap

[ClareC]

I think there is a scary statistic that you are never further than a few metres from a rat! Not sure how accurate it is but the gist is they are pretty common, seeing one in the garden doesn't't mean they are in the house.

My first house backed onto a railway line, saw one in the garden once and they never came indoors. That said, we had bird food in the shed, they gnawed through and ate it along with a parasol!! Only other time we were aware of then was when the green bin lid got broken off into the dust cart - woke up to hear loads of banging outside, really scary but investigation showed it to be a rat in the green bin! It had jumped in to get at the rubbish but then couldn't get out again so was jumping trying to jump high enough ti escape. Amazing how high they can jump, very nearly as high as a green bin ..... But not quite!!

[Frankito]

Errrrr, kill it? We found a rat in our outside drain one day and it was the size of a big cat. It had drowned thank God but I couldn't get over how big and fugly it was. I can't imagine what I would do if Iwere to wake up and find that trotting about my bedroom.

Or, worse still, with it's wee face on the pillow next to mine, nose and snout touching... Dear God, I think I am having a panic attack.

[susierose]

I had my back door open and didnt realise i have a visitor untill i went to put my son to bed and saw a massive rat in my sons bedroom! Took a hour and a call on a friend to come round to get the nasy dirty rat out! It was so big and made horrible noises. I am a housing Asso tennet my garden is kept well but the tennents upstairs have let their bit over grow and i know the rats are hidding in that jungle some where!

[ratty]

.

[libertysridhar]

Yes. You could probably seek the councils help and they would probably try and help you.

[benmorg]

There's a rat in my kitchen. What am I going to do?

[bil]

we had a dead rat in our garden approx 2 weeks ago. I was told it was large but it wasn't the size of a cat. I couldn't even go near it. If I found a dead rat in my drain I would have to find someone (probably pay someone) to remove it..I know my hubbie wouldn't do it!

[KidKruger]

A dead animal inside a drain would probably bloat a bit so you may have got an exagerrated impression of how big the rat really was. A big cat is for example, a Maine coon, rats that big would have been spotted and caused a scare in the area !! I've seen dead cows in rivers that I thought were rhinos or even elephants but it was just the gas from bloating.

[Sue]

One rat? Luxury!

I once lived in a hut on a farm, and I used to have a birdfeeder.

One day I saw what I thought was a squirrel on the feeder, then I saw it had a very thin tail for a squirrel, then I realised it was a rat.

Long story short (ish), I once counted seventeen rats of assorted sizes outside my kitchen window. There was a big grizzled granddaddy down to little ones. I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Stupid as it sounds, I actually quite liked them. However then they started coming into the hut and into my food cupboards and moving the food around. Then they started getting underneath the hut and gnawing through the wooden floor. I used to lie in my bed at night hearing them gnawing through the bedroom floor.

The farmers put metal plates beneath the floor, but that didn't deter them. Then they gnawed through the plastic boxes I kept the birdfood in.

Sadly, eventually I agreed to them being poisoned. That wasn't the end of it though, because one expired beneath my hut, in a totally inaccessible place. The smell was indescribable. For weeks, if memory serves.

Oh happy days :)

[maria]

Rats in London are normal dont panic. Get a cat. Mine regularly catches them

[Pickle]

Our cat kindly delivered a dead rat to us in bed last year. Not the type of wake up call I welcome it's fair to say :-S

[Shaila Shah]

EDmummy Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Just saw a rat in my garden, near the house. What

> can I do?! Will the Council help?!

Hi,

do you mind saying where you are? I too have a very neglected garden next door and experienced the same thing last year...if it's the same garden, perhaps we could do something about it?!

[Lollipop]

My advice is deal with it sooner rather than later. I had one in my kitchen last winter and I had to get a pest control company to get rid of it. Unfortunately it had eaten through the plaster wall behind my cooker and the main electrical supply cable to the kitchen before it popped its clogs.

They can get through quite small holes - though I think mine entered via the dryer vent.

[Penguin68]

It is very worth while checking air bricks - if they are broken then rodents (and especially rats, but mice as well) can get into the crawl space under the house via them. From there they can climb up and (I have experience of this) gnaw through the floor and enter the house that way. You can fix a sort of steel gauze across any areas you consider vulnerable - rats tend not to go through this, though they probably could if they tried. Unless you leave scraps for birds in squirrrel proof containers then rats will be encouraged to come into your garden. That means that it's a bad idea to hang balls of fat in trees etc.

If you have foxes then you are less likely to have rats in your garden.

[EDmummy]

Shalia Shah, I am pretty sure we are not talking about the same neighbour. Penguin68, we have a resident fox but she is now being hand fed by a neighbour (she is very elderly) so is unlikely to chase the rats.

I am under no illusions that there are rats metres from my house but it does put the wind up you when it runs inches from your toes across the patio! Will be checking air bricks tonight!!

[canadianlisa]

The council may come for rats. We had some in the garden and one also got in the kitchen and council man came for free to deal with it. The won't come for mice but will for rats, I think due to the health hazard. I feel for you, it is not nice. I live near the Horniman so it is Lewisham, rather than Southwark.

[pommie]

thats why its good to have foxes around as they will eat them!

[srisky]

Try pest control - we got Colin from K&O (mentioned on the forum before) for mice in December and haven't seen any since.

Doubt they can do anything for mice/rats in the garden but could certainly proof your house so they don't come in, unless they come through an open door.

[Otto]

We saw one once a few years ago in our garden - I called the council and they said I could pay them to rid of it, but, basically told me it would be cheaper to do it myself. He told me to get a spare piece of drainpipe, put some of those blue rat pellets in it...put the drainpipe on the ground somewhere out of your way but near where it was seen...anyway, we say "ratty" stumbling by in a very poor state one day, and, then, never saw him or any others again.