2173 Rats!

Hi Mark why don t you get a cat !!! :)

There different ways you can get rid of them, you can buy some venomous food, buy traps or glue that available in house-gardening shops or in your local consorzio agricolo.
You can ask the council about derattizzazione in your area and find out if they offer such a service. If you are fluent with Italian some useful information’s here [url]http://www.municipio.re.it/ambiente/infoambsito.nsf/0/fa1769cdd80a6dcdc125700b00575999?OpenDocument&Click=[/url]

good luck !!

[QUOTE=markf]Having been in the UK for the last month or so I've just discovered that quite a number of these things have decided to make a small winter home in my house in the Emilia. Not having needed to defend myself against small mammal invasion before I'm at a loss as to how to deal with them....anyone got any ideas?

Thanks all....[/QUOTE]
We've been there and have the t-shirt.The traps and glue systems are great for mice and the like but useless if they're really rats.
Best suggestion would be to speak to a neighbouring farmer if you have one because they can through the agricutural consortium get hold of class A poisons.(This of course in the absence of a big cat) this poison has to be treated with great care it's really dangerous stuff,but a handful of grain treated with this in 2-3 places where there are signs of them (holes,dung, etc)repeated for 2/3 days will kill off the whole nest other systems may kill off only a roaming adult YOU MUST KILL THEM ALL.also but only afterwards check all points where they could have entered and seal them permanently (cement etc) lastly get from father christmas a big tough cat who can live there while you're away............:cool:

When we had a similar problem on our volunteer programme in Puglia, we rigged a trap using a large heavy board balanced on a peg that would fall if a rat tried to dislodge some food, result: Flat Rat! We rigged the trap every night for weeks, and caught one every night, sometimes two.

Hope this helps,
David

[FONT="Book Antiqua"][SIZE="3"]My brothers dogs will catch and kill rats and are very good at it!!

I don't like poison as its a slow death and more dangerous if you ask around I'm sure there will be locals with dogs who would help? Also our neighbour here shots them.

I hope they will be out in Abruzzo in the Spring killing our rats!

Becky[/SIZE][/FONT]

Have you ever tried to prepare a mix of white flour and chalk powder,stored in small bags easy to be reached by rats?
Let rats eat the special mixture and..........you will never find any rats around.
Anyway I prefer a very wild huge cat :D

Thanks everyone for the tips - have recently returned so apologies for not replying and thanking you earlier.
Just to let you know: a combination of poison, filling every conceivable hole and clattering around like an army of dysfunctional robots cleared them but not before they had helped themselves to the stuffing from two pillows and a duvet. In retrospect inadvertently leaving a lump of Parmesan out since the autumn probably didn't help!
Thanks again!

P.S:Has anyone actually tried leaving a cat around to fend for itself while they've been away as an anti-vermin strategy?

We got some rat poison from the local agricultural supplier to deal with our rat problem. The name of the poison is 'Topicida'

I don't know if we have any positive results yet as we put it down as we left the house to come home in October and haven't been back yet.

[QUOTE=stef] ...derattizzazione... [/QUOTE]

Is this really the Italian for de-ratting?

You learn something every day!

does anyone know about renting out a property that they bought . sid