Rats eating the Cars wiring.

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Onemore52
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Good morning all,

Remembering that I am still stuck in Australia and that I will need to pass any info on to the GF by messenger, so here goes.

The GF took the car to the shop yesterday because the air con wasn't working and of course the mechanic found that the rats had been in the car having a feed on the wiring, nothing new there, as the house is on a river.

When I was there so long ago, I used to put a saucer with rat bait on the battery cover which seemed to work, I never saw any dead rats but the bait was being devoured.

I am thinking that I need a new strategy, and maybe the way forward is to lay baits on the access points to the house, maybe on top of the wall surrounding the house,

which is where I saw them running along when I was having a couple (well many really) of beers out on the verandah.

I have read somewhere that rats like peanut butter?

Before I get the other half to lay the baits what should I put on the top of the wall to get them interested, and what could be used to make little parcels to wrap the bait in?

The reason I gave up on the bait on the battery cover is that we have 3 guard dogs and I don't want to run the risk of them eating any spillage, we have too much money invested in them (Belgian Malinois') besides the locals fear them.

Any advice would be appreciated, as always from the brains trust.

Stay safe everyone, as I am doing here.

Cheers

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Clermont
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1 hour ago, Onemore52 said:

Remembering that I am still stuck in Australia and that I will need to pass any info on to the GF by messenger, so here goes.

And old trick is to mix dry cement powder in a container with flour or a edible powdery substance, rice will do. Once the rat/mouse eats it, it sets in their stomach and can't pass it, thus dying of constipation. Don't forget some people eat rats, not only your pets. :thumbsup:

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Snowy79
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Get some rubber snakes and leave them laying around but move them to new locations regularly. 

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Jollygoodfellow
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6 hours ago, Onemore52 said:

Remembering that I am still stuck in Australia and that I will need to pass any info on to the GF by messenger, so here goes.

OK OK. send me her info. NO need to worry , life is good :thumbsup:

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hk blues
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1 hour ago, Snowy79 said:

Get some rubber snakes and leave them laying around but move them to new locations regularly. 

Better still, get some real ones!

Joking apart, the "Scarecrow" method works for birds so seems like a plausible suggestion.

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Onemore52
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1 hour ago, Snowy79 said:

Get some rubber snakes and leave them laying around but move them to new locations regularly. 

I hope this isn't a stupid question. 

That rats being nocturnal would have excellent eyesight and would see the shape of the snakes in the dark?

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hk blues
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2 minutes ago, Onemore52 said:

I hope this isn't a stupid question. 

That rats being nocturnal would have excellent eyesight and would see the shape of the snakes in the dark?

Surprisingly, rats have poor night vision - no better than ours.   I suppose the ambient light would be enough for them to make out the decoy snakes?  

 

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Onemore52
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3 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Better still, get some real ones!

Joking apart, the "Scarecrow" method works for birds so seems like a plausible suggestion.

There is lots of snakes in the reeds down by the river, even the occasional Cobra comes into our yard, I was told one of the dogs went too close to a cobra that was in the yard, as soon as the snake flared the dog shat itself and quickly retreated.

I guess the snakes are too well fed.

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Dave Hounddriver
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Cat Piss on cotton balls, placed around the area you want the mice to stay away from!  (At least that is one of the things this article suggests)

Spoiler

The Scent That Makes Mice Run Scared
By Leigh Krietsch BoernerMay. 13, 2010 , 11:50 AM

Even if a mouse has never seen a cat before, he’ll turn tail when one is nearby. Researchers suspected that the rodents somehow sniff out their would-be assassins, but exactly what they smelled was unclear. Now scientists have isolated the compound, one of a class of urinary proteins that are secreted by cats, snakes, and a variety of other predators.

Mice have two different ways to pick up scents: their nose and a specialized organ inside their nose called the vomeronasal organ (VNO), which helps them detect other mouse pheromones. Suspecting that VNO might help the rodents sniff out predators as well, neurobiologist Lisa Stowers of The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, dropped cotton balls laced with either cat saliva, rat urine, or snake skin essence into the cages of both normal and mutant mice with inactive VNOs. The normal mice cowered in the corner, as if a predator were present. Meanwhile, the mutants weren’t afraid at all, even when an anesthetized rat was placed in their cage. “Some of the subjects were so relaxed that they actually curled up and went to sleep next to the rat,” Stowers says.

In addition, using dyes that light up when neurons are activated, the team saw neurons associated with VNOs turn on in response to the scents.

These mice were inbred in labs for hundreds of generations, none of them having ever seen a predator, Stowers notes. “This isn’t the mouse learning to recognize these cues,” she says, “he’s born with the ability to detect them.”

The next task was narrowing down exactly which predator scent compound was terrifying the mice. The team separated the components of the whole predator scent and introduced them to mice on cotton balls. Only one—a class of proteins found in urine and other secretions known as Mups, for major urinary proteins—elicited the same fear response as the whole predator scent in the mice. Most terrestrial vertebrates excrete Mups, and they are thought to play a role in intraspecies communication. Stowers, for example, has shown that Mups can cause male mice to fight, depending on how weak or strong they smell to their opponent. The team will report its findings tomorrow in Cell.

“This paper moves the field forward by about a century, because it actually identifies the proteins that are responsible for eliciting fear in mice,” says Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. It also shows that “Mups can be used not only for chemical conversations of animals in the same species, but they can also send information across species.”

Stowers says the research can teach us about how environmental cues are translated into fear in our own brains. “Fear behavior is ... very conserved from mice to humans,” she says.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/05/scent-makes-mice-run-scared

 

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Mike J
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1 hour ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

Cat Piss on cotton balls, placed around the area you want the mice to stay away from!  (At least that is one of the things this article suggests)

But who is going to follow a cat with a cotton ball waiting for it to pee?   Probably get arrested for being some kind of pervert. :hystery:

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