I bought one of these because other methods were not appropriate with children and pets. Poison and traps too dangerous for pets, and I could just imagine removing one of those sticky things with a rat stuck to it from our cat
Yeah we have a cat and she gets most of them, especially the mice, but the rats were a little more difficult. I had a suspected rat in the garage and my cat was really having difficulty nailing it. It was going after the cat food. She was definitely trying, and in fact getting very frustrated over several weeks. It was a big male.
That thing could climb as well. I saw it once. It would climb up our brick chimney and go through a little space up into the attic. I could hear it up there sometimes. When the cat was in the house she would follow these sounds around, looking up at the ceiling. That rat was one of the smartest ones I have seen to survive around our cat, which is very much a predator...large female American Tabby type.
I found this Ratzapper thing in the local Aces hardware store a week ago. You know it's one of those smaller places where somebody who knows what they are doing asks you if you need any help when you walk in the door. The older clerk said he had gotten very good reports on the thing. Plus I had also seen some blurb about it on Discovery. It was rather expensive at $40 plus, but well what the heck, it sounded interesting. Plus I have this fascination and experience with capacitors from playing with radio linear amplifiers way back.
I had it set for about a week. One big waterbug type cockroach got fried, but not exactly made crispy so to speak. It got tripped another time by something, probably just the rat doing a little careful walking maybe. Anyway, I went back to the instructions. I turned the unit off but put some peanut butter (which I know they love) on cardboard in front of the unit and some peanut butter along with dried catfood in the cut bottom of a plastic in the back behind the electrocution area. Yesterday early evening I discovered all the bait gone. Well I rebaited and energized the unit. I went to check about 10:30PM last night and the red light is flashing. Inside was a big old dead rat with eyes that had turned very white, probably from the shock....hehehe.
I would like to go find some more. I'm going to set the unit up outside tonight in a dry area. Anyway, just relating an interesting experience.
http://www.ratzapper.com/index.cfm
