One thing about the tropics is that there are lots and lots of rats. Lots. Everywhere. If there is a fruit tree, there are rats living nearby. If there is a trashcan, rats live nearby. Even if you don’t think there are, rats are living nearby. Same with cockroaches, but that is another story for another day.
The rats not only eat baby turkeys and fruit, they also chew thru everything including putting holes in walls and opening every container in your shed to find out what is inside or even try to chew through your screens. They poop and pee and make a gross mess wherever they live and they also carry fleas and diseases like Leptospirosis.
Rat Holes in Old House Rat Holes in Chicken Coop
The common response from many locals on how to deal with this problem is to use poison. When we first moved here and our abandoned wood house had rats living in the walls I decided I would use some poison on them per this advice. It turned out to be pretty sad. The poison makes them sick and when they come out of their hiding spot you are confronted with a sick suffering animal, but I was told at least they don’t die in the walls. Having poison around our chickens we figure is a bad idea because that is one of OUR sources of food too and I don’t want to eat poison. Plus the rats are pretty smart and will eventually stop eating the poison!
So not only are the poisons toxic and inhumane to the mammals that ingest them ( including dogs, cats, and humans ) many rodenticides present a secondary risk to animals that hunt or scavenge the dead corpses of rats. The owls and the hawks. So we decided to keep poison out of our environment as much as possible.
We do have a cat, but he is little use against the rats. He is pretty much afraid of them. I would be too, they are almost as big as he is. He does sometimes get the little ones.
Kitty with his baby rat (or mouse?) kill
After we lost a few baby turkeys to rats however, the war was on. I purchased a .22 caliber pellet gun (1000 fps) and a few rat traps. When I was a kid I had a bb gun, so again this is another skill I was able to employ here! Plus the pellet gun doesn’t fall under firearm restrictions. No license needed, no fuss. It is accurate from as far as the scope works (40 yards-ish), a better scope would only make things better. It is not a toy. These pellet guns are the preferred tool for hunting the invasive iguanas…yet another varmint story for another day.
Hunting Mongoose From Upon High
Rats are smart, resourceful and nocturnal which makes them actually fairly difficult to hunt. Occasionally you will see one out during the day, but it is the mongoose who are usually out during daylight hours stealing our chicken eggs and bothering the turkeys on their nest of eggs (and other birds of Puerto Rico)…yet again another story.
As for the rats however, night hunting makes things more difficult. So I have a head lamp used for spelunking that works great. It allows me to look around for a target on the ground or in a tree and then I can also use the scope on the rifle to hit the target. It works really well and is actually kind of interesting in a video game kind of way. Which was another training as a kid I received; I played a lot of first person shooters that required scopes and sneaking.
The rats at first were fairly easy to shoot. This gun is very accurate and very powerful and it is over pretty quickly for the rats. The pellets usually go in one side and right out the other. Then the next day I go out to recover them in the daylight. If you don’t recover them, they stink for a day or two until the ants clean up the scene.
Huuuge Rat
After a while the rats tend to catch on to what is happening. They see a few of their friends get whacked and suddenly their open behavior changes. They start to hide, they sneak and they become aware that the sounds they make, and their movements attract unwanted attention. They will also learn how traps work and avoid them. So multiple techniques need to be employed. I know I am not going to get rid of all of them, but if they are at least afraid of humans they tend to stay away from our immediate vicinity which is really all I am after.
Night rat hunting
Chasing down a rat at night in the jungle under the stars and moon watching the visible perfumed pollen move thru the light of the headlamp is actually a fun game. They will run in the shadows of the tree limbs (on the opposite side) which makes them nearly impossible to shoot….. Unless you make an interesting noise ~squeak~ and they will peak out their head to see what the noise is and THWAP!! It’s over.
Here’s a little audio of when Cassie came out rat hunting with me one night.
THWAP!
A night rat’s last night
There have been a lot of interesting scenarios play out, for instance one ran past a rock and I know it was hiding so I make my ~squeak~ noise while aimed on the edge of the rock. They will sometimes peek out with their ears at full attention. THWAP!!! and they fall over backwards with an instant death from a well delivered headshot.
Rats’ underground hideout below the chicken coop
The ones that don’t die instantly will scream to their friends and at that point it is impossible to find any more for the night. Their alert to others sends them back into their underground holes so an accurate death shot is important if you want to get multiple kills in a night, plus it is more humane. They die almost instantly. Hence the need for a powerful and accurate rifle to put them down quick.
They often scurry out of the chicken coop at night
I think many would consider this bizzare, especially if you haven’t lived in the country, but I wanted to share some of the dirtier sides of tropical life. I choose to look at it as a fun challenge even though I do not enjoy killing things and would prefer not to.
Living here really has helped me to see the cycle of life and death and how everything is connected. We have chickens and turkeys and fruit growing to feed us, but that means food for other animals like the rats. So if we want to keep our chickens, turkeys and fruit, and not get diseases and other unwanted effects from these pests we have to keep the scale tipped to our favor. Here we are an intimate part of nature and the food chain, not excluded. And in reality none of us truly are ever excluded, we just may not see what goes on behind the scenes.
I really want to move to PR someday. I have glamorized it in my mind, I will admit, so this post was a great reminder of the realities of living in a tropical climate. I hate rats. Hate. But I don’t know if I could kill them. (A rat got into our suburban home and we called a pest control specialist who put out poison; it still haunts me a year later to think that rat died somewhere in the vicinity of our home.) On the other hand, I cannot live WITH them. Ugh. I hate rats. You definitely gave me something to think about, and it’s a great balance to the warm breezes and year-round summer-like heat I’ve been daydreaming of all winter. Happy hunting, and if you wouldn’t mind killing them all before I get there, that’d be great, thanks. 😉
Agree^
That rat is huge! They dont even get that big in rhw cities usually, he must be eating good! husband who is from pr said if you don’t have a coop the chicken sleep in trees. I’m not sure how true that is but the rats might have a hard time getting to them like that I would think lol.
Kudos to you Britton for taking on this “vector” challenge. You are right about the health aspects. We had pack rats and mice overrunning the inside of our Utah cabin and chipmunks everywhere outside. It took a concerted effort by Larry to close their holes, clean up piles of wood or other habitats outside, live trap and shoot them (outside) but eventually he either decimated the population or they decided we meant business and vanished. In our Selrose backyard Larry used traps for the big Norway rats. He found it necessary to really clean traps after every kill as they smell their brothers demise. After about a dozen, they vacated the premises too. Good luck
You should try putting a big empty bucket you buy at home depot drill two holes across each end and stick a metal rod through it and then put a pvc pipe through that metal rod. Run a little wooden ramp up the bucket and put peanut butter all over the pvc pipe and eventually over time (night/day time) they will crawl up and they will attempt to go get some peanut butter and they will slip and fall in the bucket.
Later you can decide how you want to get rid of them. This is a more less lethal method but you can effectively kill them afterward by flooding the bucket with alcohol, gas, water, ect
A suggestion… Have you thought about a dog? some breeds were used for just this purpose ie Terriers…. Most young pups depending on breed even pit mixes if raised with other animals ie chickens, turkeys, cats etc from an early age and trained can be friends with all your animals and protect them and you from such pests. Be sure to vaccinate them though for rabies, etc. I have had one of my Labs even kill a Opossum before protecting my land and other animals. I know the local rescue always have pups in need of homes and no poison needed. Just a idea from farm/country living.
Thought about a dog but we don’t yet have the time/energy to put into training and raising one. Plus it is pretty fun to hunt rats at night. I should actually take tourists with me and make it a hunting excursion. It is pretty exciting. 😉
It does sound like lots of fun to be sure…. You guys will figure it out and you are right a puppy is lots of work. Looks like you guys are having a blast. Can’t wait to get there. Right now searching for a cheap fixer upper to purchase.Keep the great posts coming. Love it 🙂
Britton I’m not sure if I told you this in another post but I learned this from one of the jibaros up here in the mountains of Patillas if you mix cement with ground corn meal the rats will eat it and eventually will die from blocked intestines. You just will have to find a way that your chickens won’t eat it. We have had a rat chew right through our back screen door we found out later a small baby rat somehow got into our house and it was the mother rat trying to find it. Rats a very resilient and smart it’s an ongoing battle living in the mountains of Puerto Rico. Night vision goggles and a pellet gun sound like it might be entertaining.Once we move here on a full time bases a good rat dog is a must.