Marilyn Miller’s bushy-tailed packrat on its way to another home. Have you ever seen a guiltier look in your life than the one you find on a pack rat’s face? That poor bushy-tailed pack rat was caught red-handed… No, “green-handed” would be a more accurate. Marilyn Miller of SE Bend caught him plundering her kitchen garden, an unfortunate habit that pack rats cannot seem to break.
Pack rats do not need to drink water, but rather get what they need from the spinach, lettuce, peas and corn they eat in your garden. They then recycle the water repeatedly and probably pee reluctantly, and when they do, it’s enough to gag a maggot. Most of the white stains you see on our rim rock are pack rat scent posts or defecation sites.
Bushy-tailed pack rats in the wild are a beautiful and wonderful part of the magnificent World of Nature. However, the ones that got into my church friend’s pantry and plundered his emergency food supply was a different matter altogether. Moreover, the ones that got into another friend’s well house and ate all the insulation off the walls and wires were not thought of too kindly either.
Then, my good friend, Scott, a fellow Volvo enthusiast, had a pack rat that built a huge stick nest under the hood of his ’68 Ford pickup. Scott probably wouldn’t have minded that too much if the pack rat hadn’t eaten all the insulation off the wiring harness and the spark plug wires.
Probably the most annoying thing about pack rats is that what they don’t eat they either pee or poop all over – sort of like a bull in the china shop…
There are hundreds of people all over Central Oregon who have had a problem with pack rats eating, chewing, pooping all over, stacking sticks on or just stinking up everything. And they had to go.
By far the most humane way many of my other friends have solved the immediate problem of too many pack rats up to mischief is live-trapping and transporting the offenders someplace else.
Pack rats, however, have a very efficient homing ability. I know that to be a fact as I did the live-trapping thing years back. I marked their tails with fingernail polish, transported them to another location, and set them free. Within a week, they were back.
The next time I trapped them, I took them over a mile away. Within a week and a half, they were back. The next time I caught them, I took them five miles away. That did it, I never saw them again.
Over the last ten years or so, I have loaned my live traps to hundreds of people who trapped their problem pack rat(s) and hauled them away. You’ve got to hand it to those people; their dedication to handling their pack rat problem by not killing the offending animals is nothing short of wonderful.
At the other end of the adventure, however, it may be a different story. Wildlife, rodents in particular, are very territorial. They set up scent posts to mark the boundary of their territory and woe be the animal that invades it.
Jumping mice, those peace-loving sweet little rodents of our sandy deserts go into a tizzy when a stranger steps over the line in the sand. Males particularly will leap at the invader, tearing away with powerful back feet, armed with needle-sharp claws. Not a pretty sight…
Therefore, you can imagine what happens when a big, bushy-tailed pack rat is suddenly dumped into another pack rat’s domain. All hell probably breaks loose, which may be a way of speeding up Darwin’s Natural Selection. A citified pack rat may have better battling skills than its country bumpkin cousin, or it may be the other way around.
One fact remains, however, pack rats can cause many problems if they are not removed quickly, and with that statement comes a warning. The live trapping method is far better then poison, and here’s why:
Pack rats, along with most of our local ground squirrels, are known carriers of the flea that carries the Bubonic plague. Way back – when the Sun was a little old tiny thing, there weren’t no Moon, and the Big Dipper was a little tin drinkn’ cup – I worked with epidemiologists in our lava caves searching for plague fleas and found them on ground squirrels and in pack rat middens.
If you poison a rodent that is carrying fleas the animal will die, cool off and the fleas will go looking for a new host. If you happen to come along about the time the fleas are searching for new blood they will detect your infrared heat signal and zingo, you’re it. So, think twice before you kill rodents. It does take man-hours to live trap rodents and carry them off to a wilder place to live, but it’s safer for you and me. Just don’t release it in your neighbor’s backyard or downtown.
And don’t worry about the territorial struggles the pack rat will go through, only the fittest will survive, which means the survivors will be smarter and force Hav-a-Hart to build a better mousetrap.
This article appears in Aug 21-27, 2008.
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We have a cabin on the far (no roads) side of a lake. We don’t go all that often and there are usually packrats in residence. The only sensible solution is to poison them (which I hate to do) but why won’t my dog eat a dead packrat. Answer: she will. I guess we will have to consider trapping and relocating them.
I’d rather kill them, to tell the truth, but really don’t want them to die in agony from warfarin or whatever.
We have an old barn on our remote Ranch in the Idaho Mountains off of the Salmon River.. We were going to poison them to get rid of them but after reading your article have decided to live trap and move them instead. Thank You for the information…
We have Pack rats. For years we have been trapping them & moving them but they still keep coming. We have a Prickly Pear cactus in our yard & that is their favorite food. If I cut it down do you think we will get rid of the pack rats? They have a tunnel under our stone wall.
hay i have a problem tht i need help with. my friend has found a baby pack rat and its hungry and has barely any fur. wht should we do and wht does it eat when its that young.
YOU ARE KIDDING ME!! These RODENTS do thousands of dollars of damage to people’s cars a year—and you MOVE THEM?????!!! You have them trapped and instead of KILLING them–you take them somewhere so they can BE SOMEONE ELSE’S PROBLEM???!!! Please, send me your address—I’ll trap the one that has done $1300. damage to my Cabrio—and I bring him to YOU!
How much does a well fed adult packrat weigh?
Will they steal chicken eggs?
What’s the matter with you??? These are nothing but RATS, some of the nastiest disease carrying creatures on earth!!! You shouldn’t live trap them and then move them because you only make them someone elses problem – take responsibility for your actions and kill them right away. When rats showed up in my yard I shot them with an air rifle and it was very effective – they didn’t come back and I didn’t push them off on other people to deal with. I also didn’t waste any gas driving the rats across town to release them as you do – you’re very irresponsible.
Know why lepers from centuries ago used to lose their fingers and end up with deformed faces? Because the rats would gnaw on the sick people when they were asleep as the disease desensitized the nerves and they wouldn’t wake up to stop the rats. Rats are cold blooded killers with no conscience and you are treating them like a stray dog – please stop with this nonsense and exterminate the rats and quit being so immature. All of nature is based on animals killing other animals and people shouldn’t feel guilty for being part of this process.
AMEN! I love the liberal nimbys I’ll drive my prius to my neighbors and drop the rats off there. I HOPE they come by, borrow your live trap and return the favor. Stupid liberals. always dumpin their problems on other people instead of taking responsibility. What decent neighbor would put vermin over their fellow human beings?
KILL THEM (rats, not neighbors!). Freakin disease-carrying, bottom of the food chain dwellin vermin (again, rats – not neighbors). All of you who relocate these disgusting animals can pitch in $1 to defray the cost of my corolla having its ignition wires replaced at Desert Toyota this morning (chewed thru by guess what?). Put your money where your self-righteous mouth is.
For your car, wash the engine, clean everything under your hood, after that, put this liquid call ((( bitter apple)) or this one more efective (((bitter yuck)) this liquid is fot the dogs , cats, or rodents . Spray all over the engine specialy on wires and if you have some wires under car try to put some too. Is really efective. Try it
Here is another Idea. Trap the packrat and then kill it. No Poison, and it’s still dead. Moving a packrat just makes it someone elses problem.
Rats are responsible for so many nasty diseases and they destroy more than what they eat. May be we shouldn’t use rat poisons to kill rats in a painful way, but leaving them to other place just doesn’t solves the problem
Um..Im pretty sure the packrats and any other “unwanted” creature was here first. The earth is theirs not ours. We are the godzillas that destroy habitats, poison the air, water and land. Humans are supposed to put their brains to use, either leave nature alone or help it survive whether its on your property or not.
Compared to human waste and destruction, rats of all kinds deserve more respect. They have close knit families- no dead beat dads I bet and they dont go around killing each other unless they are starving. Which I totally get.
With all the intelligent compassionate humans out there why don’t we come up with a co-existing solution? Why is it when a human hates or fears a creature they immediately kill or torture it to death? Barbarism should have gone out with the stone age..but I guess its here to stay..
My opinion of course and I sleep well because I accept that I am just here to visit and do good not kill.
Rats are more intelligent than humans…they do not breed unless they know they can provide…humans have not even figured that out!
The best rat is a DEAD RAT!!!!
I live in Arizona, I have tons of packrats, and I kill them without hesitation (just like mosquitoes). They have ruined my Lincoln’s wiring, and I don’t want to burn up gasoline (adding CO2 emissions) relocating them. As a friend said, “we are entitled to carve out our own ecological niche, just like all other animals.”
As much as I agree with naturalists. I must agree at some point these animals must be killed. To transport them 5 miles away that means neighbors are being over loaded with rats. And maybe they are doing the same here.
Bubonic plague!. Hanta virus….
Not worth it. But the point of the fleas is a concern. Putting the carcus in plastic? The fleas still multiply.
No answers here.
Will human urine keep them away? I am tired of putting mothballs in my car. Over $3000 damages ecm, electrical, computers, etc.
All because of a pack rat.
I tore up its nest, it decided my truck was a good alternative.
The mechanics laugh “the companies put something on the coating of wires to attract rats?
Makes sense. Never had this problem until about 10 years ago. .
So no one answers….human urine? Marigold crushed?
All you naturalists.. think of an alternative.
I don’t want to put a live catch in my truck where my kids are going to be….DUMB!
I have rats under my trailer that gnaw all night and they also made a nest in my husbands dozer. I know because i trapped them in a victor rat trap. Killed them instantly. Yesterday they got into my hen house and killed my prize blue silke chicken. I have dogs and I sure dont want them to get fleas from these vermin. I SAY KILL THEM ALL AND BURN THEM RIGHT AWAY. The rats, not my chickens or dogs. Yay i got another one today. Hope there aren’t t too many more!!!
About 7 years ago a fairly close neighbor of ours and his wife both contracted bubonic plague, probably from fleas from pack rats. Unaware, they went on a trip to New York city, fell ill, and of course the doctors there never heard of the plague, first time in a 100 years in NYC! The wife survived with antibiotics but the husband got complications and had to be put in an induced coma for two months. He barely survived and had to have his feet amputated. Made national news; see story: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/06/experience-bubonic-plague. These rodents, along with hanta-virus carrying deer mice, are life-threatening!!
I was very interested in reading about the distance it took to relocate your pack rats. We have trapped six in the last two weeks, and probably it was one six times after it ran home from about a mile away. We now take them to an island in our lake. Hopefully they can’t swim that far. – Margy
The best way to deal with packrats is to exclude them from accessing items that you do not want to be damaged. So, build a tight house, build a tight garage, and build a tight storage shed.
Here’s a lovely article from mother jones magazine, it’s particularly appropriate to read for the angry commentators on here. I copied and pasted:
By Bruce McElmurray
Tags: More on mountain homesteading at http://www.brucecarolcabin.blogspot.com, Bruce McElmurray
Pack rats, the reason to worry if you live in the mountains. These little creatures are about the size of a grey squirrel, and are very cute to look at. Unfortunately they do not like to pose for photographs so I canโt furnish a photo of them. They are mostly nocturnal. They are also known as wood rats and frequent wood piles such as your firewood pile. It is best to be prepared and learn to live with them. Trying to eradicate them will wear you out, frustrate you, and it is doubtful you will succeed.
Pack rats can be and are destructive. They seem to like enclosed places like the engine compartment of your vehicles. They will use your hoses, belts or wiring harness to make a nest. They are drawn to shiny objects or small objects. If small shiny objects start to disappear it is probably in a pack rat nest somewhere within 75 yards from where you last observed it. So we leave our hood propped open a foot or more and they seem to avoid that semi open area. We are careful to bring in anything that they may be attracted to. Last year they chewed off the stalks of my current bushes to make a nest in my wood mill. It took me a while to figure out where my current bushes were going, but then I noted the smell – the mystery was over.
We also try to store our firewood 60-75 yards away from the vehicles and house. It is further to carry the firewood but it is better than having them around the house. I tried catching them in live traps one year and releasing them down the road from us. They seem to have built in GPS and therefore like to make a game of it. I believe they were going into the live traps just to have me relocate them so they could find their way back again. Some appeared to be so adept that they got back before I could. I used that spray hair color kids use at Halloween and noted I was constantly relocating green pack rats.
Even as destructive as they are it is hard to stay angry at them for long. They have this cute face, big ears, furry body with this pitiful way of looking at you. Probably Mickey Mouse was created from their image. They are cute and seem pretty intelligent. You can always tell when they are around because you will see the droppings and smell them. They have this habit of urinating all over everything and it has a distinct smell. When you smell that odor it is time to immediately do something or suffer the consequences. Those consequences can be expensive. They like to eat the insulation on your exposed wiring, they snack on automotive hoses, belts, and parts. We have known people who forgot to put their hood up at night and the next morning all their wiring, hoses and belts were chewed to pieces. Therefore it is best not to have any exposed electrical wire if you can avoid it. If you do have exposed wires put them in conduit or enclose them with hardware cloth or chicken wire. Otherwise their chewing can result in a fire.
We have learned to deal with them and diligence will keep you in harmony with the pack rat. If you end up missing a wrench, adaptor or some other small tool follow your nose to the nearest pack rat nest and you will most likely find it there. They have no problem in letting you use it for a time because they know that sooner or later you’ll forget again and they’ll get it back. Just remember where you found it last time and that’s a good initial place to look again.
These are one of the many circumstances that you need to be prepared to live with should you choose to live in the mountains and remotely as we do. Let your guard down for a single moment and your vehicle will be on the back of a tow truck heading for some very expensive repairs. By contrast if you live in a city you may come out one morning and your vehicle will be gone – thanks to some thief. Live in the mountains and your vehicle will be there but those parts that make it run may be gnawed up into little pieces. As for me I prefer the pack rats over the real two legged type of rat. There is no reason to get angry at them as they do what pack rats do and that is chew things up. If you just feel the need to get angry it is probably best to get angry at yourself for not paying better attention.
Let these little destroyers get in your tool shed or wood shed and they will leave it smelling so sour that it will need disinfecting. It is a smell that you wonโt quickly forget. Just one of the many considerations that you need to be constantly aware of when living in the mountains. We know on occasion we will encounter bears and mountain lions but when it comes to encountering pack rats; that is a certainty.
My first experience with rats eating the wiring in my car came when i moved from Virginia to Ca. It was expensive to have the wiring replaced. For 5 years now I have put a half bar of Fels Naptha soap under the hood of my 2 cars. No rats, mice or any other rodent. Change the soap every 6 months.
Rodents might seem little animals to you but consequences of having them in your house are unimaginable sometimes. In the past decade more than 10 million people have died because of the rodent-spread diseases. This shows how badly you need to get rid of mice away. Have you ever tried googling How to catch a mouse? Well, hundreds of thousands of people search this phrase, indicating how serious this issue is. Even Tom doesnt know how to catch a mouseJerry. http://starpestcontrol.ca/pest_control_service/rodents/
I have pack rats in my shed. The first time I caught one in a live trap – I did relocate it. But as soon as I let it out of the trap a few miles from the house – it made a bee line for the tire of my idling truck. chased it from tire to tire. finally after a minute – I drove away, but kept wondering if it jump up into my truck before I took off. Now, I drop the trap in a n 8 gallon bucket of water and drown them. Since the fleas are a concern, I’m going to start drowning them in diesel fuel – that will kill the rat, and the fleas. I took mine to relocate it the first time because I promised my daughter I would not kill it. Stupid me. All you dummies out there relocating them…. just kill the damn things. They are disease infested rats for heavens sake.
People are filthy that is why some animals carry disease. Rats have purpose. They break down garbage that people create and leave on the ground or do not properly dispose of.
Rats and every other creature own the earth and were here long before people came and decided they own it. The fact is they are here to stay and people should evolve and adapt. Learn to deal with nature in a respectful way. Obviously I cant change or stop the killing the painful methods of rats suffering due to poisoning and drowning etc. Rats have families. They protect their young unless they are starving..they may eat their babies. They want nothing from people just to be left alone.
There are deterents other methods to try.
Im pretty sure sure if you believe in a higher power that killing any sentient being is a sin against nature.
People who dont want to live around rats should consider living in a high rise building.
Funny how people kill what they dont like.insects..etc..we just fill the earth w poison.
I guess its human nature and all its flaws.
Pack rats are very smart. My son got one in his house. It sprung his rat traps and hid them behind his stove. Then it tried to make friends. My son woke up one morning with it cuddling on his chest. I don’t think he had fleas. At least I hope not. He ended up having to poison it because he doesn’t have a live trap and chances are he’d come right back anyway.
Come on, people, poison isn’t necessary, and could inadvertently poison pets or livestock. The one time I tried it, the packrat went crazy and made a total mess of my cabin before dying.
A couple of people already said the solution I find the easiest – catch them in a Havahart trap and submerge it in the nearest creek or large barrel of water. I thought it might be hard, but no, it was pretty easy and quick. I’ll deal with my karma, which is in pretty good balance, thank you.
The only part I’m not sure about is how to make sure the fleas don’t survive. Perhaps burying to a certain depth? Or leaving them in the water long enough to kill the fleas?
At any rate, after having much of the insulation in my cabin in the country tunneled through by packrats, I am ready to reclaim my territory. After discovering a previously unknown hole where the ridgepole meets the dimensional lumber, and badly so, I covered it over with a piece of hardware cloth, and for now that seems to have done the trick. But now I will have to deconstruct the wood ceiling and walls in all the places they got into, clean them (with something like Citra-Solv), and make sure from inside that the entrances are gone, and reinforce vulnerable areas with more hardware cloth. I plan to make a solution of plant scents they don’t like to saturate their areas. (Lavender, rosemary, cedar, sage… which also happen to be good antifungals.)
As for relocating, I agree that it is a horrible idea – they will either come back or become someone else’s problem. Think of your home or car as the primary bait, and offer them something else – a feast in a Havahart – and then do them in.
Don’t relocate pack rats. They will come back to your property, or starve to death while trying. Drop the live trap with the rat inside in a bucket of water and dispose of the carcass accordingly. The MOST IMPORTANT thing to do is to destroy the nest, or you will never stop having issues with pack rats. Trap them in a live trap using peanut butter and saltine crackers. Works every time. Never use poison. Poisoned rodents end up killing other predators, such as owls, hawks, bobcats, etc. through secondary poisoning. There is no such thing as a “non secondary kill” poison, despite what anyone tells you. Trap the nest repeatedly until there aren’t any more rats in there (I use a trail cam to ensure there aren’t any more running around). Once you’ve got them all, rake the nest apart. Wear a mask and protective clothing. Spray the nest with insecticide to kill any kissing bugs or fleas. Leave it be for a day, then come back and shovel everything into a container and discard. Watch out for cactus spines in the nest. Try to avoid touching with your gloves (use a wide shovel and rake to pick up everything). Check your property periodically to prevent new nests.
Great blog! It was worth the read. I have always been wary of using chemicals on them, and it seems like I have the best solution now.
I am definitely going to try out the natural rodent spray on them. Thanks
Use natural products to avoid rats.
Snap traps with almonds. Fool proof. Poisons donโt work.
The only good rat is a dead one, transport them off when having them caught? Just to annoy someone else?? We have a rat in our house and he’s proving very difficult to catch, I have a cage coming soon and if he’s unlucky enough to get caught in that, he’s gonna be taking a swim in a big bucket of water, cage and all.
Definitely don’t use poison baits for rats! A pack rat with bushy tail (wood rat) might choose to hoard it, which makes you think they’re eating it. Instead they’re lining the outside of their nest with it. Maybe they’ll eat it over the winter, maybe they won’t, but that’s not going to solve your problem during the spring and summer. A conventional rat (Norway or brown rat) that lives in close proximity to humans will probably eat the poison bait and die, but as the author of this piece points out, you could also take out a natural predator in the process. A family member of mine once had a family of brown rats move into the crawl space beneath their house. He poisoned them with bait! They all died in the crawl space and he had to retrieve them all while wearing a head lamp and respirator. So be careful with poisons. Trap them instead. The live squirrel traps that Tractor Supply Co sell work very well for pack rats. I recently had a very challenging experience with a pack rat that tripped a snap trap baited with peanut butter. I knew he wouldn’t try the snap trap again so over the course of the next two weeks I set up a live trap baited with everything I could think of including peanut butter, fried bacon, shrimp tails, and fried flank steak. Nothing worked! I noted that this pack rat had been foraging on sweet cherries in an adjacent orchard. There were whole cherries, partially eaten cherries, and cherry pits in observable areas where he was active. The adjacent cherry orchard was to be left unharvested due to rain damage, which meant the pack rat would have plenty of food for months to come. So after two weeks of failing to catch him, I cleaned out the live trap, washed it with water, and re-baited it with craisins. The very next day he was in the trap!
Reconciling respect for all nature and responding appropriately to animal destruction is difficult. I like what David Quinn says in one of his novels (Ishmael, Story of B). A gorilla is the teacher, and this is presented as the law that governs animal behavior, but that humans have forgotten:
You may kill individual animals that threaten what you truly need.
You may not kill entire species or populations.
(Not Quinn’s exact words, but I think they are to the point.)
Animals get life from eating living things (that includes plants), and protect the amount of territory they need to get food and shelter. We cannot avoid being part of this, but we can ‘live simply so others may simply live,” applying that to all species, not just our own.
Another book worth looking at is “Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green From Traditional Japan” by Azby Brown.
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The “people” who keep talking about how a “good rat is a dead rat” sound like other “people” who talk about how a “good Jew is a…”
In the bigger picture, you fine individuals are the ones who should be trapped and exterminated…as your lives are likely a much greater infestation, pest and nuisance than any biological rodent. A rat is a rat but not every rat is a rat. Think on that one for a bit, because there is always a cat somewhere ready to take YOU out while you smugly look down on your fellow kind.
The internet really sucks because I can’t just come up behind one of these “people” with a baseball bat….oh how SATISFYING that would be…..hold on….I have go take care of something…