Oh my God he/she is the size of a small dog! Yikes!

No wonder your cat was cautious. He's sort of cute in a rat-like way- you got great lighting on his face.

EEEEEEEEK!!!!!

(Give him a fuzzy tail and you've got yourself a squirrel.)

Great picture! It's so much harder trying to capture moving things on camera, isn't it? So I can appreciate the photo even more.

Last year there was a mouse that would come out during the daytime to eat the sunflower seeds that had fallen from the bird feeder. I never could catch a great picture, but I tried!

Ick Ick Ick! We have dispatched (using rat traps) 5 rats and 1 mouse here in the last few weeks. They are eating the first of my ripening tomatoes. We wait a whole year for home grown tomato BLT's, and this is WAR. This morning one trap had not sprung, but the p-butter was all gone. Mysterious. I did see some ants congregating in the area.

-Babka

I much prefer a rat then the deer that ate 24 scapes off my Ventricosa that was going to be so beautiful this year and feasted on my daylilies and ate half of a very large Fried Bananas. No deer sightings here in 15 years - until now.

DD

And here I thought there was going to be some clever turn of a phrase but you were being so very literal. Nasty things. Can't stand them. Have fun.

Hi there, new to the forum pages and had to check this one out and sorry I think they are rather cute. Don't want them around but they are cute. My four cats would have a heyday anyway.

Awwww, look at its little toes!!!!

(Actually, I'm very glad it's in your garden and not mine.)

Hey, that's good meat! For a hungry cat...

Don B.

That's not a RAT, it's a ROUS (rodent of unusual size)!

in the fire swamp ...

lol *princess bride moment*

dave

This post was edited by bragu on Sun, Jun 29, 14 at 22:08

Hey, Sandyslopes. I lived on the bench in Sandy for a while. A challenging place for growing hostas, to be sure, nevermind adding four-legged critters into the mix. Might have been a better hosta growing environment when Lake Bonneville was around.

Should have let the cat out for a minute or two. : )

Don B.

Later on that day at Sandyslopes' house, dinner prep was rudely interrupted...

Don!!!!!!!! ARggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

-Babka

Well, THERE'S something you don't see every day!

Maybe he couldn't find Giantland Mouse Cheese in your garden, so he went with the next best thing. (yuk yuk)

Now you guys are cracking me up! We have lots of wildlife around, and rats are part of it. My cat wanted at it, that's for sure. But we have a new fox in the neighborhood (OMG, the sounds it makes at night!) along with other animals out there, so she'll stay a pampered indoor kitty. But I do appreciate the rat providing entertainment for her.

If it weren't for them being disease carriers and multiplying like crazy, I would think they're kind of cute, ...in their way. There was a hawk flying over on this day, but with the great coverage provided by the hostas, this guy /girl was pretty safe. I'm still surprised how easily it hung out on the hosta leaves.

newhostalady, that's a pretty good pic of your mouse. They're smaller and cuter. Why one ate through the wire to the right side blinker of our Jeep, I'll never know, lol.

welcome to the forum hostacats!

Hey, anniegolden. Sandy's nice, maybe a bit drier. I'm up farther north in the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. I had a huge cottonwood providing lots of shade when I planted Guacamole and friends in that spot. Part of it broke and hostas aren't happy come mid-June.

Well, I draw the line at misplaced RATS in the confines of my house or garden. It is WAR when one of THEM shows up.

You want something to unsettle you badly, wait until one of them (they travel in GROUPS, not alone, and multiply rapidly) gains access to your attic and you are lying in bed and hear something scurrying overhead. No more sleep! Thank heaven we had a huntress cat when squirrels got into the attic, and came down the walls of a cedar closet, chewed holes in the cedar wood. I found the back half of a squirrel beneath the guest bed when cleaning, so I was relieved they were not squirrel sized RATS. Believe me, you don't want them anywhere around. Most port cities have rats and roaches, it is a fact, but not in MY HOUSE, MY GARDEN.
Ohhhh, a plague upon them!

Yes, the port city of Mobile is where the first fire ants got in, Mocc. (I'd bet you already are well aware of their point of origin, though).

Don B.

Um, yes, I'm aware. I did not know it as a child what they were. We called em "p*ss ants" cause they bit the ____ out of you, and always made sores on my legs in the summer. I was told they came in on the banana boats...along with tarantulas and such....teens were hired to find those spiders and snakes and kill them at the docks before they got into the city, but how effective was that, you suppose? :)

A rat inside the house would totally freak me out. They don't dare try it with my indoor cats. I can see people trying not to do anything that would attract rats, but I can't imagine having much control over what's going on outside. Not where I live in the foothills. So far I'm lucky we seem to have a pretty good balance of nature to keep them in check. For instance, lately we've had a Great Horned Owl hanging around. That's a nice sound to hear at night.

The local foxes can only help with a neighborhood that has a substantive rat population. Hope they get 'em.

Don B.

HEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!!!!!

It is my understanding that cats and foxes do fine together. But not coyotes or fishercats which are pretty darn vicious and will tear cats into fluff balls.

What I cannot understand, since New England and other north eastern locations are long settled areas, is why there is such a deer and coyote population inside the small towns and city suburbs.

Down here, of course, we have no problem of deer in the towns. If they showed up, some Cajun would be boiling rice and it would be on the table for supper. Most we find are the smaller wildlife creatures, like possums and coons, squirrels and a few rabbits, and of course snakes and a few alligators. Rats? well, they hang out in clumps of bamboo. Since they feel safer at night, the owls are helpful in controlling their numbers.

With the movie Ratatouille I had a dilemma because the "hero" was a rat....not a mouse, which seems more acceptable .... but an animated RAT. It was a good story though.

Wild rodents of any kind are unwelcome But mice are higher on my hit list then rats. Especially in domesticated pet rodents, rats are friendly and sweet, they will foster almost any other rodents(great moms). Domestic mice behavior wise are lot like wild, not nice and bite will kill and eat their pups if stressed or scared. Would I want to find either of these in my garden NOPE, but I felt like rats needed a bit of defending. :)

Nice pictures Sandy and Newhostalady. It is tough to get those moving targets.

An occasional mouse or rat outside is OK. If only they would learn to stay outside!

Voles are another story. I will resort to D Con when I see their tunnels near prized plants.

We have been overwhelmed by feral cats the last few years and rodents are on the decline. Of course, the wild cats bring their own problems.

Mocc, here in the North East there are town laws prohibiting discharge of firearms in towns, that is also their surrounding fields and woods. So deer can not be hunted. Our area is densely populated, and rifle bullets travel through house walls.
About rats, since they are about the size of squirrels, why not trap and drown them. Squirrels take easily bread to go into Havahart traps.
Bernd

This post was edited by berndnyz5 on Tue, Jul 1, 14 at 12:49