Even though Corn Harvest wasn't to good this year, it was still a very busy time, taking meals to the field, running after parts and a dozen other things.
On top of the crazy corn harvest, I am a full time incubator and that sometimes wears me down. Along with that we have been having some wonderful baby showers, but once I get home from them, I have to figure out where to put everything...not an easy task. To be honest most of my time spent on the computer here lately has been spent looking up baby stuff...I guess you could say I have baby on the brain...
Stinker is due to come in less than 4 weeks! Kinda crazy!!!
Anyways I tell you all that to say I am sorry for not posting for ever!
Ok, lets get to the title of this baby...
So we got through all our baby showers and just finished Corn Harvest, and then the very next morning we wake up and look out at our good truck and see this...
Jasper sniffin' around and acting all crazy. My thought is maybe he scared a little mouse up there and is tryin' to get it...
No big deal, I can handle a mouse.
Then I go out to the truck and lift the hood to look in and well it wasn't mouse poop that I saw...
Sure enough it was rat poo, which means we have a rat that has taken up residences in our truck...
grrrr!!!
Well Caleb heads out there to see if it's done any damage...
And sure enough the nasty little beast has chewed on a bunch of wires.
Well now we have to figure out how to get the beast out of our truck...
AKA: How to kill the rat.
Caleb's Uncle has told us how he has killed rats before...
Well Uncle Ben's "secret" ingredient is...
BEER!!
Critters love this stuff!!
So Ben said to add some beer to rat poison and the rat would eat it instead of carry it off...
He also heard that rats can't burp so if it drank some beer it would just bloat up and die from the gas in it's stomach, so I filled this cap up with beer and sat it in there too.
We didn't have a rat trap, so we also set a mouse trap hoping it might do the job.
But...
The next morning we wake up to find the rat poison all gone...
Good, Right?
Well all the rat did was carry it off and stuff it around the engine, I guess it just liked the smell of it an wanted to use it as an air freshener.
The cap that had the beer in it was empty and...
The trap had been tripped and the beast ate the cheese and then carried it off an stuffed in by the engine.
So what did we find out from this...
Well first was that we didn't have just a ordinary rat, but a pack rat instead and they are a huge pain to kill!
Second that pack rats can burp and they love beer!
So after this we went and bought a rat trap and bolted it down in there so the beast couldn't run off with it, and then we baited it...
Well one of the nights that we had this trap set I got up to go to the bathroom...
I do that a lot right now, any women who have ever been pregnant know what I mean!
Anyways I heard the dogs barking at something so I thought I had better go and see what's going on. I thought they were getting a possum or something, like normal but...
I get outside and see them sniffin' around the truck. At this point I am thinking the trap went off and they heard it and that's why the are barking.
So I pop the hood and look in at the trap and see that it's still set. Darn!
It's then that I look down and 6-12 inches in front of me is the nasty little beast...
Well I am still half asleep and had I been thinking I could have just whacked the beast out of the truck, but I don't and it gets away...grrr!!!
Well the rat trap doesn't work at all, the rat would some how trip it every night and just eat whatever we had on there.
In the processes of this I asked all my facebook friends for help and it was there one of my friends reminded me of something my folks use to kill raccoons in their sweet corn...
Fly Bate...ya know those blue crystals that you set out to kill flies, well it also works to kill rodents too.
By this time we were sick of messing with this beast so we took maybe a teaspoon of the fly bate pellets and put them in an old cat food can and since we didn't want this guy to just haul the pellets off and we knew how much it loved beer we added that to the fly bate and...
It worked!!!
As you can see it wasn't a small rat either! I was just glad Caleb was able to find the dead beast in our truck cause this was when we still had some of those 100+ days and it wouldn't take it long to be stinky!!
So Caleb took the rat and a shovel and got rid of it. We didn't want to take the chance of our pets getting a hold of it and eating it and dying. Don't know if that would happen, but we didn't want to take the chance.
So...
Fly Bate + Beer = A Dead Rat!!!!
FYI: If you use this make sure no pets can get to it cause it will kill dogs a cats too! So be careful!!
So I forgot to tell you this earlier...it's called "mommy brain"...Neither Caleb or I are drinkers so we didn't have any beer on hand, so I had to go the the convenient store to pick some up and the 24 ounce Natty Light was the cheapest. I got a few strange looks as I walked out with it! Also we really didn't use that much trying to get rid of the rat so we currently have that can still sitting in the the fridge mostly full...lol...we are stocked up for life for killing rats, but I hope I don't have to do it again!!
I will be working on getting a Post up about this year's Corn Harvest so stay tuned!
Lots of Love
Janet