Hello All!
I live in a condominium village where all the units are connected. The units are individually owned and my mother and I live in two separate units side by side.
Today my dogs discovered rats inside the under belly of my electric grill. The grill has been covered with a black grill cover for months now, (a clear indication that I have no life and work all the time, but that’s another issue). The grill is tall, but average size and the smaller of my 2 dogs had the best advantage by being able to get up under the grill. He’s a cocker-terrier mix named Scottie and scavenging for small rodents is his specialty. Thank goodness he’s never really caught anything, but he sure tries. Both dogs live inside all the time and I’m pretty horrified if/when they meet up with any kind of critters, fearing they’ll get hurt or catch a disease. So of course I freaked and grab Scottie up when I heard the squealing of the rat he was trying to get. The grill sits up against my privacy fence that is joined with my other neighbors’ privacy fence. So with Scottie in my arms I squatted down and looked under the grill and saw little legs and then looked up to see a rat running down and between the length of the privacy fence. This was a large rat! … and it was not the same as the one in the grill. I think there’s a nest in the grill and the rat in the fence is the mama.
Anyway I walked over to Mom’s who as I wrote earlier, lives on the other side of me and told her what happened. To get to the point… she thinks we should not uncover the grill and expose the rats, but rather set traps. She fears their “scattering” will cause them to go into the houses/attics. Then she tells me she’s already seen a rat walk across her back patio in broad daylight the other day and has placed an unset trap with peanut butter behind a well barricaded area (so the dogs can’t reach it) in hopes of acclimating the rat(s) and then setting the traps, etc. Our back yards are open to one another and she thinks a plan of well placed traps is the best idea. This will take time, and in the meantime I have two very curious, very stubborn dogs who will pursue the grill no matter how well I may be able to barricade it.
What a long story! Sorry, but hey y’all… any suggestions. I vote we uncover those critters and remove the temptation for the dogs so they won’t get into a fight with these rats. Besides, those darn rats probably already have a vacation home in our attics anyway.
Help!
Thanks…
