It has been a little while since I posted, but we as a family have been sick over the past three weeks. The worst was fever and bad sinus congestion. We are mostly healthy now and so I have time to write another post.
You may guess by the title that this post has to do with rats. If you have an affection for rats (which may have occurred watching the latest Pixar movie) this post is not for you.
We have seen multiple rats climbing around outside our house on fences, wires and up pipes into holes in our neighbors roof. We have also seen lots of little bits of evidence in our courtyard that rats have been there during the night. As we do not like rats and do not want them figuring a way into our house we took action.
A friend of ours bought us a rat trap. It is a simple contraption, with a door that lifts open and is set by connecting a thin piece of wire to a loop that is connected to a hook inside the cage. When the rat pulls on the food set on the hook, it pulls the loop off the wire and the door slams shut.
We managed to catch four rats this way. They loved the papaya. But after you catch a rat, what do you do. I will not go into detail, but let us just say I used water.
After the fourth one was caught (I caught three on three consecutive nights), the rats figured out it was a trap and I have not caught another one for several days. The night after I caught the last one, it seems we were visited by multiple rats in our courtyard, evidenced by those little pieces of evidence I mentioned earlier, but not a single one was caught by the trap.
Our Vietnamese friend who bought us the trap talked about how smart rats are and told a story from his home growing up about their intelligence. Our friend said there are other ways and that he would bring the next type of trap for us to try. I will let you know how it works.
UPDATE: Someone recommended peanut butter as a bait. So I tried it (crunchy) and it worked. I caught another rat last night. I am trying again tonight.
