Rodents are really destructive this time of year. Texas has nearly 50 species of rats and mice.

Whether you’re in town, the country, along a river, or in an RV park, you’re not safe — from rats and mice, that is.

I’ve learned to tolerate a number of different critters since becoming a Texas Master Naturalist, but I now have a vendetta against rats.

Sure, they’re entertaining — if you’re a cat or dog. But don’t leave it up to your pets to clear your garage or residence of the little buggers.

Even your vehicle, tucked safely in a garage at night, isn’t safe. Or a parking lot at work during the daytime, according to one story.

Car? Really?

Really!

Once a rat starts eating my car, it’s time to go to war. They can do incredible damage, undetected.

I’ve had to involve three entities and four individuals since the engine light on the instrument panel of my car came on the other day: the car dealership, the insurance claims department, the insurance man and the bug guy.

The service manager at the car dealership commiserated with my loss as he shared three recent, incredible rodent-damage stories with me.

The only thing on a car that might be rat-proof, could be the car body itself. The interior and under-workings aren’t — inside, the underside of the dash, the seats, console, and the business end of the car under the hood can suffer amazing destruction.

The woman at our Texas-based insurance claims department laughed, “Yes, we get quite a few of these type of claims,” she said when we asked.

Our insurance agent had the same problem a couple of years ago. He now strategically places rat-bait cakes under the hood of his truck. Problem solved.

Here in the Valley we have roof rats, to name one. Roof rats are really big, and fat. Of course they are, they’re well fed. The nutritional needs of rats are startling — wire, metal, plastic, wood, leather, cement, even a toilet seat in an RV, one of my friends told me.

Roof rats have long, thick brown fur and in death, a really, really rat-looking mouth. On a scale of cute to scary, mice are cute, this rat was scary.

Roof rats apparently scale walls like Spiderman. They like to sit on the top of a garage door when it’s in a closed position — inside the garage, by the way.

One night, sure enough, our cats were on the floor staring into space at the top of the garage door. Big rat. I grabbed the BB gun, just thinking to pop a shot behind the rat’s bum so it’d jump down. Well, more than a few ricocheted BBs later, the rat finally hopped down; the cats scrambled, but the rat squeezed out through a wee slot at the edge of the bottom of the bay door.

I set the battery operated Victor® Electronic Rat Trap ($49, Tractor Supply Store in San Benito – well worth the money) with a wad of cheese, turned it on, got the cats in and Voila! next morning a big, dead rat.

Using the correct bait is the trick. Although faithfully setting that big trap each night, I’d had no more dead rats. And a false sense of security in thinking I no longer had a rat problem. I’d used cheese, cat food, sunflower seeds; no dead rats. I wasn’t offering the right bait.

Now, I’m sitting at home with a loaner from the car dealership thinking I really don’t want to be responsible for paying to repair that car, too. I call the service dude and ask what they use for bait in the traps in their service garages. Cookie bits, I was told; left over goodies from the waiting room.

The last telephone call of the day was to our faithful bug guy. I was his first customer the next morning. His mom’s black Camero wasn’t 30 days old when it was relentlessly eaten by rats, he said, and then shared three other recent rat/car-based horror stories. His advise: Put traps along the floor next to a wall. Rats don’t travel through open space. Also, don’t use bait variety in the same space because it will confuse the rats. Do alternate bait after about three months. They become immune, so variety in that sense is advisable. He squirted some professional rat-attracting goop in my Victor, after shaking his head about my cheese and cat food menu. Also important, do not keep a water source (water dish for pets) in the same area with bait.

To help keep your vehicles in proper working order, I’ve found two sites that will help you take precaution to help prevent rat and mice damage. The first article was written after a rodent-population increase following Texas wildfires in 2014; read past the intro, the information applies — the wind is blowing, palm fronds are stripped from trees, rats and mice are being displaced.

The second site is referenced at the bottom of the first site, but read them both. Very interesting and informative.

If you intend to put bait cakes under the hood of your car, I recommend asking a mechanic where the most practical place would be — you don’t want the cake to bake and pour noxious fumes into your car while you’re driving. That wouldn’t be fun. If you want professional help, e-mail me, jjvanm@gmail.com — I’ll give you the number of a really good exterminator.

http://today.agrilife.org/2014/03/18/rats-rodent-proliferate-in-texas

https://lintvkxan.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ratsmice.pdf