HELP. Escaped rats!

So 2 of my breeder rats escaped. I just built a new rack for them, but before I had the rack I had 2 males escape, caught one of them, but the other is still on the loose. Yesterday I pulled out one of the tubs and one of the tan hooded females FLEW out of the cage and into my garage (which is FULL of stuff) and now is also on the loose. I can NOT have rats reproducing in my garage. There is still one male loose (I don't have the slightest idea where he is) but I know the general location of the female (but of course she can go where she wants at anytime).

I have tried setting up humane traps and they didn't even touch it. I still want to use these 2 rats as breeders, so I want to capture them alive if I can.

On the other hand, I have lots of breeders, and I could use a couple good sized rats for my female BP. So I'm thinking maybe I should just put a few rat traps out there and put them in the freezer.

Suggestions please!

Rat traps & p-nut butter, had the same thing happen, they can make a big mess in no time!

Put your traps up against a wall, where they walk.

Use sticky paper traps and peanut butter. That way the trap can't harm the rat. Then once found, just use vegetable oil to get the paper off. And mounting the paper down helps so they can't crawl away with the paper...

Good luck!

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Since they got loose in your garage, I wouldnt recommend using them as breeders or feeders. The garage is generally a place where a lot of toxins can be found. IMO your best bet would be snap traps. Their death is quick and relatively humane. It's not worth contaminating your whole group of breeders just to get a few meals for your snakes :/

I agree with the snap traps. The risks of those two rats being loose in your garage FAR outweigh the tiny cost you incur by killing and throwing them away. Snap traps are cheap and very effective. You can put lots of them around the walls and in among the piles of stuff in the garage. The faster you can catch them, the better.

If they start to reproduce, you'll have a HUGE problem on your hands very quickly. The damage they can do to your stuff is tremendous. They will chew and poo on everything. And once on the loose in your garage, they are NOT safe to be used as either feeders or breeders. They need to be culled and thrown away.

The cheapest, fastest, most humane way to do that is with good, heavy duty snap traps.

if all else fails borrow a cat from someone... preferably one that has actually caught mice before.

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Originally Posted by rivunel

if all else fails borrow a cat from someone... preferably one that has actually caught mice before.

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Haha yea! Or a yippie little terrier dog

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Originally Posted by MiamiRoyalPythons

Haha yea! Or a yippie little terrier dog

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Or a ferret. They have rodent homing devices and can fit in small areas a dog or cat can't fit. And like terriers, ferrets were bred to hunt, flush, and kill vermin.

Yea, but you might have just as much trouble catching the ferret as you would the rodents! lol

Ferrets though love and crave attn. I have 3 of them and they aren't that hard to catch or find. On the other hand the loose rats I'd humanely kill and toss them. Whenever I Have a loose rodent that's what end up happening.


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Originally Posted by MiamiRoyalPythons

Yea, but you might have just as much trouble catching the ferret as you would the rodents! lol

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I have 3 ferrets and they are trained to come to a squeaky toy. So no trouble catching them for me :)

Also, they love to hunt and nom on my escaped rats. (granted my rats are in my house. So they're not exposed to what ever is in the garage)

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Yea, the house would be different, but the garage I would cull the escapees. I've had the pleasure of having ferrets as well and something I almost learned the hard way is that no matter how much they love you, if they slip through a hole and get into the siding of the house, or end up outside, it is very very hard to find them and find them unharmed at that. Luckily I have never had to experience that! But just sayin.. lets keep the fuzzies out of the garage lol

My cat helps me round up any escapees. She thinks it's a brilliant game to help me chase them around, and will head them off so that I can grab them.

I had a rat loose that I could not catch. She ended up chewing every hose in our washer and we had to buy a new washer. I'm glad that's all she chewed, but still, that was a $300 machine I had to replace, not a $5 rat... I put out every kind of rat trap there is aside from sticky traps. She would eat the food out of the traps, but never got caught. She even ate food out of the tomcat snap trap-the black plastic one. That was the worst month ever! The only reason I "caught" her, is because I stopped free feeding one of our cats and he killed her. That cat still isn't being free fed in case this ever happens again. He thinks he is special and doesn't have to eat the same food the rest of the cats are eating out of the timed feeder :rolleyes: