There's a rat in me kitchen what am i going to do?!

I started this weekend as I do any weekend. List of jobs to get done on my days off and the plan to unwind with a few drinks. But this was not going to be. Picture a Friday evening, you have just finished your dinner and are sat ready to watch some great television. Glass in one hand, remote in the other. The children have done there chores and you know that you can relax. Then your neighbor comes around and tells you they have seen a rat in their garden.
Now I have always been wary of rats as they are vicious, disease-carrying vermin and they bite. Not only that but they can breed every 3 weeks and cause really big damage to your property.

You can brush this off as not your issue as it was in your neighbors garden or you could even say " well, its winter and they are just trying to find food and warmth". but within 30 minutes of that conversation, my dog started barking in the kitchen of our home. I went to investigate and she was staring at the kitchen sink. I stood there wondering what had got her so concerned when my worse nightmare was confirmed. There was a rat in the kitchen ceiling.

It's Morphin Time!!

After checking the house for ways that the rat could get into my home it was time to get defensive and take action. noticed the outside security light come on and sure enough, I see this big rat run under a gap in my patio.
The next day as the sun breaks through the curtains I suited up in old clothes and gloves and started what would be a full day of rat-proofing my home.

The first thing I needed to do is find out where the gap in the patio leads to and the answer was really clear. It leads to a tunnel that leads to the drain. I used dome ready to mix concrete and mixed it with broken glass in and filled the tunnel and gap in. Then I pulled everything out of the outside sheds and outhouses to assess what damage (if any) I can find.
That's when I spotted a big hole in the wall which lead straight to my kitchen sink and through the wall cavity.

As you can see from the images above, I have used the glass/cement mixture to fill the hole around the pipe and also pulled up the floorboards above the kitchen to find another hole in the brickwork which I also filled in. I left some rat poison under the floor and replaced the boards and carpet back down.

That will keep the little blighters out

ERMMM... nope!
The next night the scurrying was back but this time it was in my kitchen wall. So it looks like what I did was trapped the rat in the wall cavity. You may be thinking 'well, it can't get out' wrong!
as you can see in the pictures above, there are water pipes coming through that wall and into my kitchen cupboard. I had to think quickly and went with a good old taping of the cupboard door.

Its a Trap!

Luckily the local hardware store was open on Sunday so we purchased some good old fashioned snap traps and laced them with peanut butter. I put these in the outhouses against the wall. We also purchased a multi-catcher which once the rat enters, it can not get back out. We placed peanut butter on two slices of potato and baited the cage. We have not caught anything yet but its early days.

As you can see from the pictures above, we have defended our home and today I made the biggest step of informing environmental health which will send out a pest controller to finish the job.

Hopefully, we have done all we can to protect our home and in time this pest problem will subside. Time will tell!