THIS IS WAR! On rats....

I think life mocks me at times, today I've taken delivery of a couple of things to review... The Victor Electronic Rat Killer Trap and a bunch of bait...

And, I literally went to groom the guinea pigs and since this morning, I stepped into the shed and there was an immediate god awful smell.  The smell of rat.

But this isn't life mocking me... 

No, the mocking comes from the fact that the bloody test model rat trap doesn't work, and then I put the blocks of bait (which only come in a plastic bag) on top of the cage for an hour whilst I cooked tea... And when I returned the blocks and bag were gone, replaced with a set of six fat shiny fresh rat shits!

So tomorrow it's WAR!

The guinea pigs and rabbit are being taken out of the shed, all the storage bins (which are large plastic and covered with heavy lids) will come out, everything will be swept and the whole shed will be torn down and chopped up.

All the paving slabs are coming out and being stacked... and I'm digging out about 14 inches around the weather-board layer of the concrete fencing and I'm putting in a layer of chicken wire and back filling with pea gravel.

It's war, war war.... We're sure the things are attracted by the open den our pet Rabbit has, she has the run of the shed at night, with a saw dust den and food... They must be getting in to drink her water and eat her hard feed.

But we live near a water course between a quite pungent stables and equally pungent, at times, dairy farm.  Rats are par for the course, however, this is clearly getting out of hand.  Willing, in day light, to climb onto a surface to eat a whole bag of 15 bait blocks.  It at least tells me they're not getting that much sustenance from the rabbit's bowl, they were hungry for the bait.

The guinea pigs are unaffected they're in a closed stack of cages, but clearly the rats have climbed onto the top of the stack at least once.

It's all coming out, I know what I'll find more of the damn tunnels I found before under the paving slabs, but this time it is going to be the whole shed.

WAR!