Ugh! Get a bb gun - that's what DH wants to use to deal with rats eating our birdseed...
Add Squirrels to the list of opponents too - they dug holes in my newly plated boxes and now half of my seeds are missing!!
It sucks when your hard work is enjoyed by something other than you!

Get dachshunds. Mine patrol the yard constantly, and they are darn good ratters.

Just a thought...

Try a pellet gun and/or dog first. Don't waste your time with cats. Unless you're not supplementing the cats diet with much, they are too finicky and unreliable to make good ratters.

Plus, we'd rather keep seeing your posts on GW instead of reading about you being arrested.

Well, it's time to break out my "Total Critter Control" book again. Unfortunately there aren't too many suggestions for deterring rats, but here is what I've got:

• Keep the grass mowed. High grass and heavy brush attracts a variety of animals.

• Use a seed-catcher beneath your bird feeder to prevent it from reaching the ground.

• Clean up pet food.

• Raise your woodpile by 15 inches to make it less hospitable to rats and mice for burrowing.

• Clean up and cover any litter.

• Keep bushes and trees trimmed so they don't touch the house. If you can, cut brush three feet back from side of house.

• Heavy vines and vine ground cover are also good cover for rats.

• Get rid of standing water.

• Metal trash cans are better than vinyl or plastic.

• Don't feed pets outside unless you clean up immediately.

The book doesn't mention ducks at all, but it has some suggestions for geese, which may be helpful?

• Fencing, prickly shrubs or hedges may make a yard less desirable. When confined, they may feel more threatened than in an open area where they can detect predators.

• To save your grass, switch to a taller, less tasty variety.

• Other ground covers that irritate them include hosta, various kinds of ivy, and myrtle.

• Use dogs to harass ducks and geese into leaving.

• Sometimes "sound techniques" may work, like whistles, screaming machines, crackers and various banging devices.

• You can try visual devices like kites, which resemble eagles flying overhead.

• The Miniscare Windmill is a unique device that deflects ultraviolet light off its blades to repel birds.

• There are some fertilizers that taste disgusting to geese, and I would imagine ducks as well. Some, like Bobbex-G, have an ingredient that makes the repulsive taste stick to their beak.

Pick your tomatoes as soon as the color breaks from green or orange, and then bring them inside to ripen over the next 4-5 days. They'll taste just a good and NOT be appetizing to the rats, squirrels, birds or raccoons.

Jay- I feel your pain. All my lettuce & radish gone. They even chewed a hole in our screen & got on our porch. Ate all my milkweed baby plants. Traps w/peanut butter-- gotcha.
This weekend I will be defunking my porch. Just the thought of those little buggers running on it gives me the heebie jeebies.

Beverly

I'm going to assume your "problem ducks" are free-roaming muscovies.
The State of Florida considers them nuisance exotic wildlife, thus unprotected.
If you live in a neighborhood where discharging a .22 or shotgun is not an option, try this:
Circle a baited area with deeply-driven tent stakes. Monofiliment fishing line slip-nooses are tied to these stakes. The diameter of each noose should be about six inches.
It won't take long for ducks to get their feet caught in the nooses.
A baseball bat or golf club does the rest.

I bought a roll of ratwire (?is that it's name) it's about 1/2 inch close woven (not really woven but I don't know how to describe it). It was 36" wide and I cut it down the middle with metal shears so it's 18" wide and then made circles with it to enclose young seedlings. Some I tied to close it and others left untied to be flexible on how to get it around plants. You can make 6 from the roll.

I hope you can visualize it, it's just a little individual round fence 18" tall to protect young delicious stuff like brocolli, lettuce, salvia (yummy),sunflowers seeds and seedlings, etc.

This won't help with rats unless you put a top on it (not hard) but it saved my plants from what I assume is a hungry rabbit and would work with ducks too.

Good luck.

Denise

I have giant dogs and two cats, one of whom, though he is well-fed, happens to be a good mouser (it's genetic, some are, some aren't, the ones that aren't won't bother until they're starved, the ones that are don't care how much you feed them, they're still out hunting.) So I don't have this kind of problem, but a friend of mine recently mentioned that she just took out an areca palm because of the rats it attracted. Is there anything in your yard that they're feeding on year-round? That might keep them living there, probably not bothering you most of the time, but making you crazy when they decide tomatoes just look so much better than areca seeds.

Just a thought.
Susannah