Dealing with tree rats

[WarPig1976]

I'm not going to lie. I've been coming home from work and blasting these trash can diggers with a good ole Crossman 880. I've had it up to here with the tree rats tearing up my trash, my lawn furniture, my shed!!
Between my yard and next door I counted....37!!!.. Guys, I'm infested,, I have to do what I have to do.

Anybody else dealing with tree rats getting ready to hunker down for winter?

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[NRA]

I hate tree rats! they chew up my deck and trash my garden. I have tried every human way to deal with them and no luck. I say take em out!

[lude92]

yea same here they try to live around the house so i shoot them with my 760 pumpmaster but i eat them

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

"Kill them all. Let God sort them out."
Just be glad you do not have mice. I have to put mothballs in my outboard motor to keep them from eating the wires. Found a pile of Roundup ready soybeans in one upper drawer of my tool box.
At least tree rats have a place in the human food chain.

[browningautorifle]

I too have found that trapping is fine, but you still have to relocate them with a pump shotgun after. That way they can't come back.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

relocate them with a pump shotgun

[seabot2]

I had them for a long time. They would chew through my cedar shake roof and tar paper to get into my attic. Everytime I chased them out and repair the damage they would come back again. My roof leaked bad during rain storms. And yes, I tried everything I could to get rid of them, glue traps, cage traps, snap traps, shooting them with my airgun, etc. They even tried to come in from under the house, chewing the area around the drain and sewer pipes and making their home behind the walls. These rats seem to breed in the dry storm drains in the neighborhood. All the stray cats were picked up from our neighborhood so there aren't any natural predators either. My neighborhood are mostly dog lovers and that may also be the reason why the rats come around. They are attracted to the dog food people leave out. When I turn on the light to my dog's feeding area at night, I can see several rats running off. Poison would work well, but that is something I don't want to use. They'll die in places I can't access and the smell is horrible.

[vintage hunter]

I think squirrels get blamed for a lot of things they don't do. I live way out in the boonies and rarely do they cause any damage to my property. I found out Pack Rats were the critters doing the damage. They did so much damage to one of my service trucks that it would cost more to fix it than it's worth. It cost $400 to fix the other one where they chewed up the fuel pump wiring under the bed. The little malefactors.
I had an old stove in my shed I kept welding rods in, one day I slid it out from the wall to clean out behind it and noticed something had built a nest and taken up residence in it. I'd noticed there were some small sockets, wrenches and other items missing off my work bench but couldn't figure out what was happening to them. When I cleaned critter nest out of the old stove there they were. Evidently Pack Rats are attracted to shiney objects. They hard to get rid of once they show up, they're smart enough not to eat rat poison but they'll carry it off to they're nest. They seem to have a fondness for fresh meat, I've caught several in a live trap baited with a piece of stew beef.

[seabot2]

Wait a minute, tree rats are squirrels? We don't have squirrels in my parts, but lots of rats.

[jmoore]

tree rats are squirrels?

And quite tasty! Especially the young ones.

Just why they'll go after some structures and not others is a mystery. They would attack a friend's house a mile or so away, and our outbuilding, but don't do much to my house. As far as actual rats, they don't seem to come inside much except when we've dried corn or seed that's not inside sealed metal containers. The odor must be irresistable! (That and once we didn't get all of an old honeybee hive cleared out of the ceiling. The rats liked the honey so well they ate the honey soaked sheetrock.)