Wood rats in AC ducting (Graphic)

[bduares]

Latest scores in an ongoing multi-year battle with wood rats in my ac ducting under my house. Pulled up a floor vent and laid down some tortilla chips covered in peanut butter as bait. Shot with a Diana Bandit .22

[Berserkeley Mike]

Why are these rats in your A/C?  What is their motivation?
Just curious.

[dk1677]

Nice shooting Jared!

[maraudinglizard]

Nice, wipe them all out Jared.

Why are these rats in your A/C?  What is their motivation?
Just curious.

They get in everything. I have had wire in my vehicles stripped, they have gotten in AC vents on my truck, intake air box, boat, and lawn mowers.  They damage my fruit before it ripens and even steal chicken eggs. They are looking for a place to make nests and store food. I use a 50/50 mix of jiffy muffin mix and baking soda. It works, no dead rats stinking up vehicles or sheds.

[bduares]

Wood rats, aka pack rats, are different than the Norway rats you get in sewers/garbage. They tend to be large and have only a couple of babies at a time and don't have any babies at all until they are at least a year old. There tend to be only 3-5 of them at a time when they move into my ducting. As their name suggests they also live in the woods, as do I. Mine are the Eastern Wood Rat variety that tend to live at the bottoms of trees in the forest here, which is literally outside my door. They are also fond of living in car engine bays, as my sister, who lives next door, found out last month when one moved nesting material on top of the engine of her car and chewed through the ignition coil wiring.

My rectangular metal AC ducting runs along the bottom of my house and the central AC is disconnected and has been unused for decades. So the wood rats come along out of the forest and see a big empty ducting system in which to make a cozy nest out of the rain and cold. When they are present you can hear the scuttling sounds in the ducting and hear them chewing on wood and plastic behind and beneath bathtubs. So I pull up a floor register and toss some bait in the ducting and wait with my Bandit pointed into the hole in the floor waiting for them to come get the bait laying a foot or so under the end of my barrel. The Bandit is the perfect gun for this sort of pest elimination since it is practically silent but powerful enough to take them out with one shot.

After I clear out the family of wood rats I am usually pest free for quite a while, until another family moves in from the forest and starts making their racket in the ducts and behind the bathtubs, when I repeat the process. I kill about 6-8 of them per year. They tend to be too big for rat traps and seem to like setting off the traps and then taking the bait, and the traps too. I have lost multiple large rat traps to these things. Not only do the traps not work well on them, they also like the shiny parts of the traps and take the traps back to their nests. Since I have multiple dogs, both indoor and outdoors, I am averse to using poison bait in case one of my dogs gets hold of a dead or dying poisoned wood rat and ends up poisoned as well.

[ranchibi]

Excellent shooting on those wood rats! Nice pic 👍.

[maraudinglizard]

Since I have multiple dogs, both indoor and outdoors, I am averse to using poison bait in case one of my dogs gets hold of a dead or dying poisoned wood rat and ends up poisoned as well.

This is why I use the corn meal / baking soda mixture. I have one dog that is a good ratter but has a tendency to eat one on occasion. Plus I have chickens that free roam the yard so I don't need them eating rat poison. Rats can not burp, the baking soda mixed with stomach acid makes them blow up from the inside. Also if that doesn't happen in one sitting, alkali poisoning will eventually kill them. I have wood rats and most nest in the ground here until it floods then they move to higher ground. I keep a dish of the mix each vehicle's engine area and in the sheds. I have made it through the winter so far without wiring damage to either vehicle.

[Berserkeley Mike]

Ah, I see, rats are what rats do.  The roof rats around here cause the troubles you describe.  For some reason I thought the wood rats stay in the woods; that's where I see them, in big pile nests.  I don't know, maybe all my roof rats keep the wood rats out of the house, and so I don't see them there. 

[Mzq284]

Jared,
Not graphic enough for me, kill every last one. We had a bunch move into the chicken coop when I was a teenager.  The local grocery store were slobs with their trash, they needed a second dumpster, so the neighbors had rat problems. We would take our 760s in with our friends and have little safaris. Good times,  but we were glad when the store moved and we cleaned them out.
Kris, good info on the safe poison,  thank you.

[smythsg]

That's some pretty deadly peanut butter. Nice shooting Jared!

[airgunaut]

A previous home had a crawl space along the garage slab on two sides. It had huge piles of pack rat poop, carcasses, and skunk poop. Nasty. One pack rat actually ran INTO the garage as I did an oil change with the garage door up. Two skunks quarreled in one of the crawl spaces another evening--I could hear them from the room above--and a horrendous fume cloud spread to the entire garage. It got so bad in the room where I could hear them that I staggered out coughing, nauseated, and with severe headache. Took a long time for the noxious cloud to lessen.

After that, I hung nylon pantyhose legs filled with mothballs tied off on one end. Several around the edges, plus I threw many mothballs inside the crawl spaces. Kept listening and looking in. No more pests, but I had to keep refreshing with some mothballs to remind them to keep out. When the gravel driveway up the steep hill along one garage side literally caved in, we discovered broken 2x4 pieces and other evidence that the previous owner's rumored "secret room" had been a grow room. No wonder his construction work (he built the house and garage) had been so variable.

It became a requirement that any future house we bought must have a full concrete slab or a basement. That has eliminated such infestations. Just need to check for any gaps under doors to keep mice out. They can squeeze through tiny slits.

The insects are a different story. Still have to kill plenty of crickets, ants, etc.