Unwanted Visitor

[gbendaly]

good day to all

I spent the whole of my week end assessing the damages and cleaning after an unknown rodent visitor, most probably a mouse/ rat that managed to get on the boat!!
the extent of the damage is not the issue here , I realize that It could have been worse,just imagine those teeth chewing a piece of my stuffing box of through hull hose with the valve open !!
anyhow considering the possibility of it still being on the boat .... somewhere,I installed two traps in the cabin, and to avoid any future intrusions, I plugged all possible access holes in the cockpit lockers and installed rope disks on my mooring lines.I even sprinkled some poison pellets on the cockpit floor and on the dock.
I wish I had a cat on board

any thoughts, comments and advice on the matter would be appreciated.

[CSY Man]

Peanut butter on the rat-trap is really efficient.

Rats onboard is a problem here in South Florida also and I have seen the results of a rat family living on a boat over a 2 year period....

[Talbot]

Your sails are the most vulnerable, and mice/rats like chewed up sailcloth as the basis of their nests.

Check any that are in bags, and hoist all your other sails.

[stevensc]

Mice love to chew the insulation from wires as well, I had this problem on an outboard fishing boat till a snake moved aboard and the mice left or became dinner, my wife wasn't too happy when the snake slithered across the deck on a fishing trip offshore. know anybody with a snake for rent?
Many animals, including snakes, don't like the smell of mothballs and leave if you sprinkle some of them around their hiding places maybe the mice will.
Good Luck
Steve

[osirissail]

Priority - Kill that thing as quickly as possible! A rat got on my boat three years ago and it took 3 months to kill him. During that time he did over US$3K worth of damage and I am still finding damaged things 3 years later. If you have plastic (polybutyl) pipes for your water system - they think it is candy and eat multiple holes all along the piping - actually trying to get to water to drink. The love eating insulation off electrical wiring (can you say - electrical fires). They can squeeze through a 1 inch (25mm) gaps with ease. Cats do not work (as a stand along statement and also with the rest of this sentence) to catch rats/mice as they cannot squeeze into the bilge areas.
- - Everyday, the rat is onboard more damage is being done as he is hungry. My rat was a mangrove rat that was impervious to all known rat poisons legal and illegal. He thought they were picante sauce and gobbled them down. I finally killed the beast by overfeeding him. If you cannot catch him by traps or whatever in a week the put out copious amounts of food and water to stop him from eating the boat systems. That system worked for me as he got so fat that when he tried to get into the fresh water bilge for a drink he got trapped under some hoses and drowned or maybe it was heart failure due to the high cholestial diet and fell in.
- - Anyway kill it quickly, poison gas if necessary and then once dead you can track the body down and remove it. To prevent future invasions install steel mesh screening over all your engine room vents. Nobody thinks of these ways for them to gain entrance and the plastic insect size screening is no barrier to a rat. Also made sure howse pipes are covered. They run up anchor chains/rodes and continue straight down into the anchor lockers and finally the bilge.

[Endojoe]

Don't end up with this worthless feline. I had a rat in my house for several weeks and several hundred dollars worth of damage, tired poison, live traps and I borrowed a worthless cat from a friend (not the one pictured below)...finally set a couple of THESE TRAPS....caught dead in less than a half hour, no ****. I don't sell the things, just a very satisfied customer, and so are a couple of friends I've loaned my set of traps to. BTW, I went ahead and bought their brand of bait gel for the traps too, their system works like a charm.

[barnakiel]

Change the marina, too.

b.

[sarafina]

find some stuff called 'Just One Bite'

Farmer friend put me on to it and it is the most effective I have found.

[hellosailor]

Poisons work, but as CSY said peanut butter on a plain spring trap is great. There's no way the critter can 'steal' the bait, no matter how they try, so sooner or later, the trap works on them. Usually sooner.

[forsailbyowner]

We stayed at a marina in Stuart and killed a rat every night with one trap. Aside from a hole in rode bag they didn't do any damage. If you miss them once they are much harder to get with the same kind of trap. Peanut butter is great bait, a shrimp smashed into the trap bail is also very efficient. I was surprised, with all the food we have onboard they went straight for some coconuts that were on deck. Chewed holes in them and hollowed them out. One of our parrots let's us know when ones aboard. He has a certain scream he's reserved just for rats.

[mesquaukee]

Some friends of ours let a snake loose in the boat get the rat which it did but then it died in an inaccessible area and the boat reeked for months.

[osirissail]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Poisons work, but as CSY said peanut butter on a plain spring trap is great. There's no way the critter can 'steal' the bait, no matter how they try, so sooner or later, the trap works on them. Usually sooner.

- -You have never met Dominican Republic "Luperon rats" - these guys are experienced sea rats. I had one dozen spring traps set all of the boat in the bilges and engine room along with 4 sticky papers and 2 have-a-heart cages. I went through 2 jars of peanut butter and ended up with five black and blue fingernails from trying to set the traps to "hair trigger."
- - A helpful boater said the problem was the traps were set flat, they should be tilted up so the rat has to put his front paws on the trap to get to the bait. Okay, so I set two traps in the engine room up against the side of the hull at about a 30 degree angle. And waited. Nothing, again in the morning all the traps were cleaned of bait and not triggered. He really loved the tilted traps as he could lounge up against the side of the hull and reach a paw over the trap and get a claw full of peanut butter. At least that is how I imagined him doing it.
- - In real life, one night as I slept on my side with my cat tucked into my stomach area, I awoke to a faint noise and opened an eye. Across from my bunk on a shelf was the rat preening himself. Carefully I tapped the cat on the head until he was awake. I pointed slowly at the rat and said to the cat - "Him rat, you cat - get him!" The cat looked at the rat, looked at me, yawned and went back to sleep. [Of course a pet cat is well fed, pampered, and not dumb enough to do work.]
P.S. hot off the press - the International Space States has rodents (mice). See: Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station - Yahoo! News

[zeehag]

Originally Posted by Endojoe

Don't end up with this worthless feline. I had a rat in my house for several weeks and several hundred dollars worth of damage, tired poison, live traps and I borrowed a worthless cat from a friend (not the one pictured below)...finally set a couple of THESE TRAPS....caught dead in less than a half hour, no ****. I don't sell the things, just a very satisfied customer, and so are a couple of friends I've loaned my set of traps to. BTW, I went ahead and bought their brand of bait gel for the traps too, their system works like a charm.

that cat is toooo cute--he needed a playmate and found one----!!!!
ps--glad ye caught the critter---they are dangerous on boats....anywhere there are wires to be stripped, they will do so.....

[hellosailor]

Mice on a space station. Oh, didn't they learn anything from "the trouble with tribbles" ? :-)

My dog had a similar reaction to a mouse once. "Not in my contract, boss" and she watched me chasing the damned thing back and forth without getting involved at all. Of course, unlike a cat, my dog was too big to throw at the mouse. (Rat, whatever.)

[gs41escapade]

Never had one aboard, but use peanut butter and a regular spring trap. You will get the rodent in one night, almost guaranteed. I use 'chunky' and wedge a nut under the bale . I've had them lick off the peanut butter and not trip the trap.

Put the trap onto a couple of sheets of newspaper, and make sure to put it pointed against a wall or bulkhead. Rodents don't like to venture out into open spaces. They stick to the walls.

I don't recommend poisons. They certainly work, but then you can't find the rodent and dispose of it. Not a good thing in an enclosed space. :-(