We don't have any rodents in the house, as far as we know., but the bite marks look like they're from a squirrel. However, whatever did this ignored a giant container of food scraps on the counter next to the apples. What did this???
Rats. I promise you it’s rats. (Maybe mice, but less likely) the last couple years I’ve been having an issue with them getting inside in the winter too.
That cheese was awesome when I was a kid. Perfect size to slice one chunk per sandwich for grilled cheese and it melted fast so you didn't have to overcook or burn the bread. Or use toast and melt the cheese on a griddle with a puddle of margarine on it. That's the fast and lazy method, but if you like greasy cheese and dry bread on a grilled cheese sandwich, it's the way to go. Especially with that awesome government cheese.
Also, tip I got from an exterminator: use gloves when baiting and setting your traps. Rodents will be a little less wary if the traps don’t smell like a human just handled it.
Peanut butter on a tiny bit of bread wedged into the bait holder. They love it and will need to lick at the PB a bit to get it all which guarantees hey trigger the trap while still in it.
Peanut butter is the scent added to all the glue traps i used when i had a whole nest of mice in mid to late december 2016...
Never again. The glue traps are fucking torture that's all they are. It doesn't kill them so theyre struggling to peel themselves off when you find them. Sometimes chew limbs to try and escape, sometimes only catch a limb or a tail and then fling themselves around trying to escape it and glue themselves to other things like the front of your fridge/stove/cabinets/rug... You have to drop them in a bucket of water to finish them off it's fucking horrendous.
You can trap just about any animal with peanut butter and apples, from mice to moose and everything in between. Even bears can't resist. Hell, I'd get caught trying to steal an apple wedge slathered in some chunky Jiff. It's the perfect bait.
If you use peanut butter as the glue and apple on top when they try and pull the apple off of it, the peanut butter makes the release on the trap more successful.
This explains so much! I discovered I have a rat that’s been living on my porch (I saw him, definitely a rat), I found his little nest and he had a few apples in there (I had left a bag of them on the porch)
A rat gave me ptsd. I could hear it running on the hardwood floors at night but we couldn't catch him. Then either it happened or were dreams of it jumping on the bed with us. Dude was so hungry he ate my dried chipotle peppers.
Finally he took himself out by climbing into the electrical junction of the stove and cooking himself into a gross little puddle of death.
In the late 2000s I was a broke student living in a less-expensive-than-it-should-be centertown apartment. It was a century building, with 2 large apartments per floor. It was huge and shabby, but ornate (amazing mouldings, high ceilings, and a servants entrance in the kitchen), and I loved living there.
Then we were introduced to what we called the "rat mouse". The super called it a mouse, we disagreed. This thing (which turned out to be a family of things) chewed through my wooden dresser drawer, ate through a pair of spanks, but never once touched our food.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I rolled over in bed and kicked one. I screechd, turned on all the lights, and was frantically hunting it with a plastic hanger while my housemate was trying to calm me down. I was livid. My downstairs neighbor tried to use sticky traps but that was chaotic for us early 20s young women. She ended up having to kill it in the alley the day her BF broke up with her, in the middle of winter, while sobbing. I fully understand the PTSD.
We named it (them?) Steve and eventually they disappeared. I do still remember that apartment fondly though. Steve still comes up in conversation from time to time.
I laugh when I see people give advice to deter rats and mice with chili powder, because this year they stole super hot thai peppers and habaneros from my garden.
One day, while doing nothing particularly out of the ordinary, because of natural laws he was completely powerless to understand or intuit, he was instantly killed in a horrifying way by forces vastly in excess of anything he was ever designed to experience. For no reason, and to no ones particular surprise or upset.
I used to do in home therapy and a rat scurried towards my client and I, I kicked that motherfucker across the kitchen like a soccer ball and he slammed into the oven door loud enough to scare the shit out of everyone in the house.
We rented a house that bordered open space in a Denver suburb.
We had a mouse problem - not just visible signs of droppings, but we'd see them scurrying when we'd enter a room. Our dogs, a lab mix and a leonberger, saw them and were like, "oh them? Yeah, that's Ted, Bernice and their kids."
So we borrowed our daughter's cats for a week.
We're sitting in the living room watching tv -my husband, me, 2 dogs, 2 cats. Ted comes tooling across the floor and pauses to sniff something. Right out there in the middle of all of us, not a care in the world. Each of our critters, both canine and feline, raise their heads and watch him stroll through the room and into the kitchen.
I like to imagine when the cats showed up, the dogs greeted them with, "oh hey, it's great to see you fellas again! We missed you! You're gonna love this new place. More rooms, more stairs, a covered back porch - and we've made friends with the tenants, Ted and Berniece! They're terrible at tug-o-war, but hilarious when they start telling stories about the neighborhood."
we had, what I truly believe was the worlds dumbest (but hella cute) male cat. We actually set up a trail camera with night vision so we could see his reaction to mice, rats and even a raccoon eating from his dish. He sort of just moved out of the way for them and sat, paws tucked under, watching them intently as they ate his food. Like, "here fellas, let me get out of your way..theres plenty for everyone! the hooomans fill the bowl EVERYNITE for us!!! I don't believe he ever killed a single thing. I have also had a couple of absolutely murderous cats...one who caught and consumed and entire squirrel (well, she left the little nose with the whiskers attached, plus the furry tail) in my bedroom closet. My stomach heaves a little when I remember the day because I was home with an awful migraine laying in my dark bedroom. I could hear faint crunching noises (mmmm squirrel bones!) but I was so nauseous and my head was pounding sooo badly I was incapacitated. Finding the ummmmm "remnants" was a total horror show when I finally went into the closet to investigate later that night. I love the names you gave the mice in your post. They feel vaguely like...family now 😂😂😂
See, so that's why I thought at least the gray tabby guy might be useful. When we lived in Canada, he was the bringer of a rat apocalypse. I've got a super-stomach-heaving story about it, and it suddenly occurs to me that might have been the end of his hunting days. Kinda like why I don't do tequila shots anymore, lol.
And thank you. We tend to lean hard into anthropomorphism, but I'm willing to bet we're rarely incorrect. I wish I had pictures of Gerald and his wife, the ducks who lived in a flooded ditch in front of our house for the past few years. A video would have been better. Poor Gerald would waddle straight towards my husband, sitting at the window in his office, with his wife squawkin' at him, "ASK THE MAN, GERALD, ASK THE MAN. YOU MARCH IN THERE AND ASK HIM RIGHT NOW!" With Gerald saying, "yes, dear. Yes, dear" and looking exhausted.
Cats won’t go after rats , you need a Rat Terrier for that, most animals won’t approach rats, livestock will stomp them but the Yerrier is your best answer because they are so smart and each one you trap or kill you’ll have to do in a different way because they watch and learn from each other
I have cats and dogs. One of them is a schnauzer!! Freaking bred to catch them and he sits on his ass when he sees a mouse or a rat. Like bro, this isn’t the place for free loaders. Do your job!!!
My cat seems to be under the assumption, that animals inside the house are also pets, and wouldn't touch them.
Outside, hes a serial killer. I've seen him catch birds out of the air, who were swooping down a little too low. He's a vicious machine. But indoors, hes a cuddle monster who loves anything and everyone
I don't know about rats but mice are stupid. My mom's house has a patio where there is no food and all the cat boxes and trees are out there. It's a catio at this point. There's no food in there at all. But the mice go in. It's like a gladitorial obstacle course for them and they keep dying in it.
Toxoplasma gondii infection dramatically alters mouse behavior, primarily by reducing their innate fear of cats, making them attracted to cat urine and smells, which increases the chance they'll be eaten, thus helping the parasite complete its life cycle.
I have a couple. And a dog. They’ve even caught a few. Problem is, rats are smart. After the cats/ dog caught one or two, they learned how to avoid them.
I even got traps once. Caught one, never caught another because the other rats saw it was a trap.
A long time ago, I lived in an old granary on a farm where the farmhouse had burned down. The barn was intact, full of old straw, and sheep, and barn cats. There were lots of rodents of all kinds. My cat Minerva, a great hunter and queen in the whole cat hierarchy, would kill dozens and dozens of mice and chipmunks. But when a big rat invaded our little house, and spent the nights chewing through the woodwork, Minerva would crawl under the bedding and hide with me. No matter how many rat traps I set, or what I used for bait, no trap would catch that rat, it was smart! I don't know if they had developed those nasty sticky traps back in those days, if they had, I'd never heard of them. But in the same circumstances today, I'd set aside my compassion and catch that SOB.
Yeah, mice in a house can be annoying and difficult to keep from coming back even after you get rid of them. I’ve never dealt with rats in a house, but I DID have pet rats as a kid, and I would not want to deal with them in the house. I mean my rats were pretty dopey by rat standards but they were still pretty damn smart.
It's night time... in a kitchen, just like yours. All is quiet... Or is it? The North American House Hippo is found throughout Canada and the Eastern United States. House Hippos are very timid creatures and are rarely seen, but they will defend their territory if provoked. They come out at night to search for food, water, and materials for their nests. The favourite foods of the House Hippo are chips, raisins, and crumbs from peanut butter on toast. They build their nests in bedroom closets, using lost mittens, dryer lint, and bits of string. The nests have to be very soft and warm, House Hippos sleep for about 16 hours a day.
I had mice getting on top of our stove for weeks and I couldn't figure out how. Then one night I watched my cat jump on top of it and rip a mouse out of one of the burners.....they were getting on top of the counter by going inside the oven, climbing the insulation, and popping out the top under the burner area.
I had a mouse stove problem too. I set up a camera around Christmas after moving into a new older house. We left candy canes on the countertop and the camera caught it taking one down the vent area but it got stuck.
I moved into my Grandmother's old house to take care of her. I knew there was mice, I live in a very rural area and any house more than a year old has mice plus her basement still has a section that's dirt floor. It's just an inevitable issue you learn to manage around here.
She hadn't been cooking for herself so the oven wasn't getting any use. Well I learned there were mice in the stove when I turned the oven on for the first time and the house was immediately flooded with the most foul, vile, disgusting smell I have ever smelled. I have no words to describe it. Mouse piss and burning nest and ammonia. If you've ever smelled it you know. I had to air the house out for 2 days to totally get rid of it. Needless to say we have a new oven.
We absolutely had that in our old apartment, which was an efficiency so all one big room. One night we were watching TV and I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked over and there was a mouse sitting on the edge of the stove calmly grooming its tail and looking at us like hey, what are we watching tonight?
They don't push, don't crowd
Congregate until they're much too loud
Fuck to procreate till they are dead
Drink the blood of their so-called best friend 🐀
They don't scurry when something bigger comes their way
Don't pack themselves together and run as one
Don't shit where they're not supposed to
Don't take what's not theirs, they don't compare
As a previous owner of pet rats they're identical to rat chew marks.
The only reason I'm not committing is because I don't know what squirrel bite marks look like
I had a squirrel in my house once and it was like the Tazmanian Devil whipped through. It came in the window, caused immediate chaos then (after trying to leave through the closed window several times) found the open window and escaped leaving terror and destruction in its wake.
As a current owner of a squirrel, the other person is right. If you have a squirrel in your house, you'd know it.
Having had both rats and a squirrel I can't say they're easy to tell apart, especially in something soft like apple, but I'd guess the squirrel would've moved the apple out of the bowl. But these do look more rat based on size.
9 time out of 10, if he can move something to sit how he wants, he will.
Rats. Or large mice. Set a trap. An old school snap trap. Open and handle the trap with latex gloves on, and spray the trap with something to hide its, and your, scent, like apple juice. The traps smell like machine oil. Rodents are tricky bastards. Rats especially so. Set to a hair trigger. May take some adjusting. Jam a nut (peanut, walnut) in the trigger if you can, and apply some peanut butter and smashed apple, both on, and a smear below, the trigger. It doesn’t take a lot. More than one trap if possible. Set them against and parallel to the wall. Provide cover for the trap. Not over, but beside. Block the approach from the wrong side of the trap. Create a fatal funnel where the rodent will feel safe enough to stop and eat. Near where the food was. Remove all food sources. Turn off all lights. Good luck. I’ve caught mice in as little as 15 minutes after leaving the room.
The scrap container is shorter than the apple bowl, and we've never found any evidence of mice, like poop or something. But yes, they look like mice teeth marks.
Rodents freakin love under the stove, particularly if it's gas because pilot light = warm.i once looked at a dodgey apt and when i pulled the broiler out there was a full rats nest. No rats just the old nest.
Size wise, definitely rats. Those tooth marks are big, mice don’t have teeth that large.
Get, or borrow a cat or ideally more than one cat, and get an exterminator to come over asap. Rats are the worst pest you can have, even worse then bed bugs, so take care of it asap.
Not unless you are bringing an alley cat or barn cat in the house and it's a small rat. My mom's cat got its ass whooped by a giant rat in our kitchen one night.
5 cats in the house. One is completely disinterested in rodents, 2 others are curious but don't engage, 2 will engage but only 1 will actively stalk and wait for hours to pounce on the fucker
This is what I always tell people about my cat. He is awful at actually catching or killing rodents, but if there is one in the house he absolutely will find it and I will know about it.
I got an email someone reported mice in my building before I went on vacation. Obviously I still had to drop the cat off at the sitter’s but it gave me an easier evening. Rather than cleaning I left everything as is, including the litter box, to keep her scent as strong as possible.
Mice aren't smart enough to avoid a cat scented home, but rats are. In college, my apartment building became infested with rats. They never entered our unit though bc it smelled like cat. We had a giant hole in the wall behind the stove and the rats didn't care about the easy access because it smelled like predator. However, my apartment now has mice (old building, it's inevitable around here) and those suckers are dumb enough that my arthritic, not-trained-by-the-former-street-cat, girlie can catch them
Small dogs. I have a Chihuahua/Dachshund mix that can take out anything smaller than a possum. We get a rodent here and there, but she brings them to us dead. I have five cats. Charlie is my mouser.
My small outdoor cat would've killed that giant rat in a second.
I was afraid she'd bring home a dead dog or something at some point. As soon as any neighborhood cat saw her they ran away like they had seen Satan himself.
I mean, for the most part a cat takes care of pests by its sheer existence. Rats are such bad pests because they are so fucking good at surviving, and part of that is a strong instinct to avoid predators. Typically if you get a cat, the rats will just find a new path of least resistance to food that isn't your house.
I had a huge mouse problem when I first moved into my apartment. Trapped six of them before finally just getting a cat (I wanted one anyway). Never even saw evidence of a mouse again. My friend lived in a garden apartment (ground floor) and had a rat issue. Told her my story and so she got a cat. Same thing, never even saw evidence of them again.
Rodents just take the path of least resistance to food. Getting a cat means that you're no longer the easiest path to food. Assuming you live somewhere where there's other houses/apartments for them to try.
I had rat issues that went away the moment we got a cat. The one thing a cat definitely will do is kill babies. If you can trap the adults, the cat will stop babies from growing up.
We had an exterminator for months but it didn't eliminate the problem.
Our almost 4 yr old had attempted to write her name in purple crayon on our door (or at least the couple letters in her name she knows). My wife asks her if she knows who did it, and her answer is "No, maybe daddy". Likely story lol.
Though with this photo, those teeth marks look like rodent bites.
Had something similar happen when we woke up one morning and saw this banana on the counter, so we contacted our pest control company and they told us we had a rat. We have a doggie door and always left it so the dogs could go through the flap anytime day or night. They said a rat probably came by, felt the warmth of the doggie door, came inside, and climbed up onto the counter to find the banana.
We had to buy those cartoon type wooden mouse traps and put a few of them in the kitchen with some peanut butter on them. As soon as we went upstairs for the night, we heard one of the traps spring and came back downstairs to see a big ass rat bleeding out on the kitchen floor. After that, the plastic insert for the doggie door went in every night lol
I had to scroll down about 30 mins to find a comment about the ops over confidence. Now I understand why the world is such a shithole nowadays, nobody's paying attention and most living in denial.
Rats. I promise you it’s rats. (Maybe mice, but less likely) the last couple years I’ve been having an issue with them getting inside in the winter too.
At that bite size it's 100% rats, they go mad for apple and will ignore other food if there's apples available.
So I put apple on my rat traps. Suckers can't resist.
Damn, big cheese has been lying all this time.
That’s because it’s government subsidized cheese
Not enough people recognize how funny this is
Obscure government cheese vault reference ✅
That cheese was awesome when I was a kid. Perfect size to slice one chunk per sandwich for grilled cheese and it melted fast so you didn't have to overcook or burn the bread. Or use toast and melt the cheese on a griddle with a puddle of margarine on it. That's the fast and lazy method, but if you like greasy cheese and dry bread on a grilled cheese sandwich, it's the way to go. Especially with that awesome government cheese.
Thanks, dairy subsidies!
Living in the projects sucked...but government cheese was the best!
Some kids in the suburbs had nothing but government cheese too.
It was the best. government cheese had a stigma but fuck if it wasn't good enough to look back on it fondly.
My aunt used to get government cheese but hated it and would give it away. I Loved that stuff.
G-cheese was top notch when I was a kid!
Not just that. Lots of us grew up eating government cheese.
Gender is an artificial construct invented by Big Bathroom to sell more bathrooms...
Minimalism is a scam too. Created by big small, to sell you more less
Have you heard of the USDA's cheese cave? https://modernfarmer.com/2022/05/cheese-caves-missouri/
That's the US National Strategic Cheese Reserve and it's a critical part of beating the Red Menace.
I blame Tom & Jerry
Yes, we 🐀 ♥️ 🍎s
Name checks out.
😂
Yes we do 🐀🐀
🐀 we do 🐀 yes
Yes! Apples! Leave them on the counter!
Indeed my larger cousin
pizza-rat was a false flag operation
But also, we 🐀 ❤️ 🍌 s
Is this a r/beetlejuicing ?
I think so. I may have just qualified as well 😂🐀🏴☠️
Interesting. Maybe I’ll have to try my traps again with apple.
I tried them with ham and cheese before and only caught one.
Also, tip I got from an exterminator: use gloves when baiting and setting your traps. Rodents will be a little less wary if the traps don’t smell like a human just handled it.
Peanut butter on a tiny bit of bread wedged into the bait holder. They love it and will need to lick at the PB a bit to get it all which guarantees hey trigger the trap while still in it.
Peanut butter is the scent added to all the glue traps i used when i had a whole nest of mice in mid to late december 2016...
Never again. The glue traps are fucking torture that's all they are. It doesn't kill them so theyre struggling to peel themselves off when you find them. Sometimes chew limbs to try and escape, sometimes only catch a limb or a tail and then fling themselves around trying to escape it and glue themselves to other things like the front of your fridge/stove/cabinets/rug... You have to drop them in a bucket of water to finish them off it's fucking horrendous.
Glue traps shouldn't exsist
I used pb and apples with live traps. Drove them to a field a couple of miles away on the opposite side of a major freeway.
You can trap just about any animal with peanut butter and apples, from mice to moose and everything in between. Even bears can't resist. Hell, I'd get caught trying to steal an apple wedge slathered in some chunky Jiff. It's the perfect bait.
That's how my family died. Now I want revenge.
I tried them too, way too cruel.
We're getting the whole family in on the r/beetlejuicing here! 🖤🩶🐀🧀
Maybe peanut butter on an apple slice is the ultimate rat trapper
If you use peanut butter as the glue and apple on top when they try and pull the apple off of it, the peanut butter makes the release on the trap more successful.
I hot glue my rat traps down so they don’t run away. We got some big ones around here.
Wait till I come to your house. We will see who gets a glue trap.
Which is why I only get cyborg rat traps.
I'll getchu anyway, i am the niiight!
This explains so much! I discovered I have a rat that’s been living on my porch (I saw him, definitely a rat), I found his little nest and he had a few apples in there (I had left a bag of them on the porch)
Seconded. We are dealing with mice and they did the same thing to a bowl of apples. The hole was half that size or less.
A rat gave me ptsd. I could hear it running on the hardwood floors at night but we couldn't catch him. Then either it happened or were dreams of it jumping on the bed with us. Dude was so hungry he ate my dried chipotle peppers.
Finally he took himself out by climbing into the electrical junction of the stove and cooking himself into a gross little puddle of death.
I had a similar thing happen. One was in the ceiling above my fuse box and chews a wire and electrocuted itself. It was… disturbing…
In the late 2000s I was a broke student living in a less-expensive-than-it-should-be centertown apartment. It was a century building, with 2 large apartments per floor. It was huge and shabby, but ornate (amazing mouldings, high ceilings, and a servants entrance in the kitchen), and I loved living there.
Then we were introduced to what we called the "rat mouse". The super called it a mouse, we disagreed. This thing (which turned out to be a family of things) chewed through my wooden dresser drawer, ate through a pair of spanks, but never once touched our food.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I rolled over in bed and kicked one. I screechd, turned on all the lights, and was frantically hunting it with a plastic hanger while my housemate was trying to calm me down. I was livid. My downstairs neighbor tried to use sticky traps but that was chaotic for us early 20s young women. She ended up having to kill it in the alley the day her BF broke up with her, in the middle of winter, while sobbing. I fully understand the PTSD.
We named it (them?) Steve and eventually they disappeared. I do still remember that apartment fondly though. Steve still comes up in conversation from time to time.
(Them?) made me lol😂
Oh.
…this wasn’t a silly light hearted “internet exaggeration”…
wow.
I’m so sorry you experienced that. holy shit.
I laugh when I see people give advice to deter rats and mice with chili powder, because this year they stole super hot thai peppers and habaneros from my garden.
One day, while doing nothing particularly out of the ordinary, because of natural laws he was completely powerless to understand or intuit, he was instantly killed in a horrifying way by forces vastly in excess of anything he was ever designed to experience. For no reason, and to no ones particular surprise or upset.
In this we are more like him than different.
-The Eulogy of the Electrified Rat
I used to do in home therapy and a rat scurried towards my client and I, I kicked that motherfucker across the kitchen like a soccer ball and he slammed into the oven door loud enough to scare the shit out of everyone in the house.
Rats have no dental insurance.
So, they need to eat " some" apple every day.
Do you not have enough kittyecats in your house ?
We rented a house that bordered open space in a Denver suburb.
We had a mouse problem - not just visible signs of droppings, but we'd see them scurrying when we'd enter a room. Our dogs, a lab mix and a leonberger, saw them and were like, "oh them? Yeah, that's Ted, Bernice and their kids."
So we borrowed our daughter's cats for a week.
We're sitting in the living room watching tv -my husband, me, 2 dogs, 2 cats. Ted comes tooling across the floor and pauses to sniff something. Right out there in the middle of all of us, not a care in the world. Each of our critters, both canine and feline, raise their heads and watch him stroll through the room and into the kitchen.
I like to imagine when the cats showed up, the dogs greeted them with, "oh hey, it's great to see you fellas again! We missed you! You're gonna love this new place. More rooms, more stairs, a covered back porch - and we've made friends with the tenants, Ted and Berniece! They're terrible at tug-o-war, but hilarious when they start telling stories about the neighborhood."
we had, what I truly believe was the worlds dumbest (but hella cute) male cat. We actually set up a trail camera with night vision so we could see his reaction to mice, rats and even a raccoon eating from his dish. He sort of just moved out of the way for them and sat, paws tucked under, watching them intently as they ate his food. Like, "here fellas, let me get out of your way..theres plenty for everyone! the hooomans fill the bowl EVERYNITE for us!!! I don't believe he ever killed a single thing. I have also had a couple of absolutely murderous cats...one who caught and consumed and entire squirrel (well, she left the little nose with the whiskers attached, plus the furry tail) in my bedroom closet. My stomach heaves a little when I remember the day because I was home with an awful migraine laying in my dark bedroom. I could hear faint crunching noises (mmmm squirrel bones!) but I was so nauseous and my head was pounding sooo badly I was incapacitated. Finding the ummmmm "remnants" was a total horror show when I finally went into the closet to investigate later that night. I love the names you gave the mice in your post. They feel vaguely like...family now 😂😂😂
See, so that's why I thought at least the gray tabby guy might be useful. When we lived in Canada, he was the bringer of a rat apocalypse. I've got a super-stomach-heaving story about it, and it suddenly occurs to me that might have been the end of his hunting days. Kinda like why I don't do tequila shots anymore, lol.
And thank you. We tend to lean hard into anthropomorphism, but I'm willing to bet we're rarely incorrect. I wish I had pictures of Gerald and his wife, the ducks who lived in a flooded ditch in front of our house for the past few years. A video would have been better. Poor Gerald would waddle straight towards my husband, sitting at the window in his office, with his wife squawkin' at him, "ASK THE MAN, GERALD, ASK THE MAN. YOU MARCH IN THERE AND ASK HIM RIGHT NOW!" With Gerald saying, "yes, dear. Yes, dear" and looking exhausted.
Cats won’t go after rats , you need a Rat Terrier for that, most animals won’t approach rats, livestock will stomp them but the Yerrier is your best answer because they are so smart and each one you trap or kill you’ll have to do in a different way because they watch and learn from each other
Many cats will happily take on rats. My neighbor had a rat problem, we have a feral colony nearby and now there is no rat problem.
I have cats and dogs. One of them is a schnauzer!! Freaking bred to catch them and he sits on his ass when he sees a mouse or a rat. Like bro, this isn’t the place for free loaders. Do your job!!!
My cat seems to be under the assumption, that animals inside the house are also pets, and wouldn't touch them.
Outside, hes a serial killer. I've seen him catch birds out of the air, who were swooping down a little too low. He's a vicious machine. But indoors, hes a cuddle monster who loves anything and everyone
Welcome friends! Enjoy these apples that mother put out
"They must be there for you!"
That our mother put out
Suddenly communism
You should leave him inside if you’ve seen him snatch songbirds. They’re devastating to the local ecology
Damned songbirds ruining our local ecology with their singing and their birding.
🎵 hey let's fuck 🎵
Sounds like he should remain indoors.
Generally rats avoid places with cat smells, so just having a cat can help even if it doesn't hunt them.
That is unless they have toxoplasmosis which makes them attracted to cats instead.
I don't know about rats but mice are stupid. My mom's house has a patio where there is no food and all the cat boxes and trees are out there. It's a catio at this point. There's no food in there at all. But the mice go in. It's like a gladitorial obstacle course for them and they keep dying in it.
It might be warm in there. Plus they could be eating the cat poop. So jokes on you. Its a buffet in there.
Toxoplasma gondii infection dramatically alters mouse behavior, primarily by reducing their innate fear of cats, making them attracted to cat urine and smells, which increases the chance they'll be eaten, thus helping the parasite complete its life cycle.
You shouldn’t let your cat outside if it’s killing birds
He clocks out and doesn't bring work home. Good work life balance.
I have a couple. And a dog. They’ve even caught a few. Problem is, rats are smart. After the cats/ dog caught one or two, they learned how to avoid them.
I even got traps once. Caught one, never caught another because the other rats saw it was a trap.
A long time ago, I lived in an old granary on a farm where the farmhouse had burned down. The barn was intact, full of old straw, and sheep, and barn cats. There were lots of rodents of all kinds. My cat Minerva, a great hunter and queen in the whole cat hierarchy, would kill dozens and dozens of mice and chipmunks. But when a big rat invaded our little house, and spent the nights chewing through the woodwork, Minerva would crawl under the bedding and hide with me. No matter how many rat traps I set, or what I used for bait, no trap would catch that rat, it was smart! I don't know if they had developed those nasty sticky traps back in those days, if they had, I'd never heard of them. But in the same circumstances today, I'd set aside my compassion and catch that SOB.
Yeah, mice in a house can be annoying and difficult to keep from coming back even after you get rid of them. I’ve never dealt with rats in a house, but I DID have pet rats as a kid, and I would not want to deal with them in the house. I mean my rats were pretty dopey by rat standards but they were still pretty damn smart.
Rats and mice HATE tea tree oil
Leave the apples out tonight but sprinkle a coat of flour around the bowl. In the morning, you should have your answer.
Based on the size of those teeth marks, most likely a rat.
Most likely the North American house hippo
What the hell did you just call me
It's night time... in a kitchen, just like yours. All is quiet... Or is it? The North American House Hippo is found throughout Canada and the Eastern United States. House Hippos are very timid creatures and are rarely seen, but they will defend their territory if provoked. They come out at night to search for food, water, and materials for their nests. The favourite foods of the House Hippo are chips, raisins, and crumbs from peanut butter on toast. They build their nests in bedroom closets, using lost mittens, dryer lint, and bits of string. The nests have to be very soft and warm, House Hippos sleep for about 16 hours a day.
Anyone who grew up in Canada knows these words by heart.
Those commercials are why Fox News doesn’t work on me and why I have never bought anything from an infomercial
They should bring them back to explain AI to old people
Got my house hippos all cozied under the tree here in the PNW. They don’t enjoy apples btw
Found the Canadian
You can see them riding mobility scooters around any midwestern Walmart
Possum?
Elephant
Buffalo
Whale
Land Shark
Sea Cow
House Hippo
Mother-in-law?
Leave the apples out but sprinkle mouse traps around the bowl.
Answer and solution!
Use rat traps. Those teeth are big. If you use a mouse trap they will walk away with them and the will have learned to avoid traps.
Honestly there should be shit around. I'd just look for that
I had mice getting on top of our stove for weeks and I couldn't figure out how. Then one night I watched my cat jump on top of it and rip a mouse out of one of the burners.....they were getting on top of the counter by going inside the oven, climbing the insulation, and popping out the top under the burner area.
I had a mouse stove problem too. I set up a camera around Christmas after moving into a new older house. We left candy canes on the countertop and the camera caught it taking one down the vent area but it got stuck.
I moved into my Grandmother's old house to take care of her. I knew there was mice, I live in a very rural area and any house more than a year old has mice plus her basement still has a section that's dirt floor. It's just an inevitable issue you learn to manage around here.
She hadn't been cooking for herself so the oven wasn't getting any use. Well I learned there were mice in the stove when I turned the oven on for the first time and the house was immediately flooded with the most foul, vile, disgusting smell I have ever smelled. I have no words to describe it. Mouse piss and burning nest and ammonia. If you've ever smelled it you know. I had to air the house out for 2 days to totally get rid of it. Needless to say we have a new oven.
We absolutely had that in our old apartment, which was an efficiency so all one big room. One night we were watching TV and I saw something out of the corner of my eye and looked over and there was a mouse sitting on the edge of the stove calmly grooming its tail and looking at us like hey, what are we watching tonight?
RATS
https://preview.redd.it/8i6nvsu34z6g1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=18de4a10bc4c816a027b28f2b28173d0240ba8b9
Rats! 🐀 They don't eat, don't sleep They don't feed, they don't seethe Bare their gums when they moan and squeak Lick the dirt off a larger one's feet
They don't push, don't crowd Congregate until they're much too loud Fuck to procreate till they are dead Drink the blood of their so-called best friend 🐀
They don't scam, don't fight Don't oppress an equal's given right Starve the poor so they can be well-fed Line their holes with the dead one's bread 🐀
They don't scurry when something bigger comes their way Don't pack themselves together and run as one Don't shit where they're not supposed to Don't take what's not theirs, they don't compare
Ahhhh a random pj reference. Love it
Maybe there could be rats hiding in your house
You can drop the "maybe" and change 'could' to 'are.'
There are be rats hiding in your house!
Stop making me laugh my baby is sleeping
You have mice. I’m guessing the scraps container was taller and they couldn’t get inside but they could get into the shallow bowl holding apples.
Those bite marks look pretty large. I’m leaning more towards rats.
As a previous owner of pet rats they're identical to rat chew marks. The only reason I'm not committing is because I don't know what squirrel bite marks look like
If you have a squirrel loose in your house, you know you have a squirrel loose in your house. They’re not sly like mice and rats.
I had a squirrel in my house once and it was like the Tazmanian Devil whipped through. It came in the window, caused immediate chaos then (after trying to leave through the closed window several times) found the open window and escaped leaving terror and destruction in its wake.
As a current owner of a squirrel, the other person is right. If you have a squirrel in your house, you'd know it.
Having had both rats and a squirrel I can't say they're easy to tell apart, especially in something soft like apple, but I'd guess the squirrel would've moved the apple out of the bowl. But these do look more rat based on size.
9 time out of 10, if he can move something to sit how he wants, he will.
Rats. Or large mice. Set a trap. An old school snap trap. Open and handle the trap with latex gloves on, and spray the trap with something to hide its, and your, scent, like apple juice. The traps smell like machine oil. Rodents are tricky bastards. Rats especially so. Set to a hair trigger. May take some adjusting. Jam a nut (peanut, walnut) in the trigger if you can, and apply some peanut butter and smashed apple, both on, and a smear below, the trigger. It doesn’t take a lot. More than one trap if possible. Set them against and parallel to the wall. Provide cover for the trap. Not over, but beside. Block the approach from the wrong side of the trap. Create a fatal funnel where the rodent will feel safe enough to stop and eat. Near where the food was. Remove all food sources. Turn off all lights. Good luck. I’ve caught mice in as little as 15 minutes after leaving the room.
I hate that I'm saving this.
The scrap container is shorter than the apple bowl, and we've never found any evidence of mice, like poop or something. But yes, they look like mice teeth marks.
They are healthy mice who eat fruit and don't shit where they eat
…and wear little Birkenstocks
Or dr martines.
Doc Mousens
Vegan and gluten free 😂
Unlike the unhealthy mouse we found doing the backstroke in the bacon grease cup. Guess if you are going to go, that is the way to do it as a mouse.
ugh we had zero evidence of mice until one random day i pulled out the drawer under the stove and ✨mice shit and piss✨
Ohhh they had a designated toilet area 🥹
Under the stove, they had a heated toilet seat. Very bougie.
Rodents freakin love under the stove, particularly if it's gas because pilot light = warm.i once looked at a dodgey apt and when i pulled the broiler out there was a full rats nest. No rats just the old nest.
At least they were potty trained.
Are you sure you could tell if the scraps had been nibbled or not?
i got news for ya... those are BIG teeth marks. you have rats, not mice. rats
You've got polite mice that are calorie conscious. I'd leave Pears next time more fiber and softer skin
They sometimes poop while they are eating so make sure you loo under the apples and bowl and you might see some
Shine a blacklight/uv lamp and you will see the evidence. Male rats leave a piss trail as they drag their balls pissing down them constantly.
the teeth Marks... only one sort of animal makes such teeth marks.... the family is named after their dentals.. the rodents
Rodentia? I don't believe they exist!
Why has this last part never occurred to me in 47 years?
Size wise, definitely rats. Those tooth marks are big, mice don’t have teeth that large.
Get, or borrow a cat or ideally more than one cat, and get an exterminator to come over asap. Rats are the worst pest you can have, even worse then bed bugs, so take care of it asap.
Not unless you are bringing an alley cat or barn cat in the house and it's a small rat. My mom's cat got its ass whooped by a giant rat in our kitchen one night.
Most cats are good at indicating rats at least, but few can kill a big rat. Usually just cats in their prime or hardened alley/barn cats as you say.
5 cats in the house. One is completely disinterested in rodents, 2 others are curious but don't engage, 2 will engage but only 1 will actively stalk and wait for hours to pounce on the fucker
You just described a college group project.
This is what I always tell people about my cat. He is awful at actually catching or killing rodents, but if there is one in the house he absolutely will find it and I will know about it.
It’s less about the cat actually fighting rats than it is about the cat’s scent scaring them off.
I got an email someone reported mice in my building before I went on vacation. Obviously I still had to drop the cat off at the sitter’s but it gave me an easier evening. Rather than cleaning I left everything as is, including the litter box, to keep her scent as strong as possible.
Mice aren't smart enough to avoid a cat scented home, but rats are. In college, my apartment building became infested with rats. They never entered our unit though bc it smelled like cat. We had a giant hole in the wall behind the stove and the rats didn't care about the easy access because it smelled like predator. However, my apartment now has mice (old building, it's inevitable around here) and those suckers are dumb enough that my arthritic, not-trained-by-the-former-street-cat, girlie can catch them
Small dogs. I have a Chihuahua/Dachshund mix that can take out anything smaller than a possum. We get a rodent here and there, but she brings them to us dead. I have five cats. Charlie is my mouser.
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Pet tax: Three of the cats and both dogs in my hammock with me.
My small outdoor cat would've killed that giant rat in a second.
I was afraid she'd bring home a dead dog or something at some point. As soon as any neighborhood cat saw her they ran away like they had seen Satan himself.
She sounds badass, I love her.
I mean, for the most part a cat takes care of pests by its sheer existence. Rats are such bad pests because they are so fucking good at surviving, and part of that is a strong instinct to avoid predators. Typically if you get a cat, the rats will just find a new path of least resistance to food that isn't your house.
I had a huge mouse problem when I first moved into my apartment. Trapped six of them before finally just getting a cat (I wanted one anyway). Never even saw evidence of a mouse again. My friend lived in a garden apartment (ground floor) and had a rat issue. Told her my story and so she got a cat. Same thing, never even saw evidence of them again.
Rodents just take the path of least resistance to food. Getting a cat means that you're no longer the easiest path to food. Assuming you live somewhere where there's other houses/apartments for them to try.
I had rat issues that went away the moment we got a cat. The one thing a cat definitely will do is kill babies. If you can trap the adults, the cat will stop babies from growing up.
We had an exterminator for months but it didn't eliminate the problem.
A cat or two in your wall will clear out the rats.
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cat in the wall, ehhh?? I know that game
Looks like my house.... but the culprit is my 7 year old daughter 😂
We do have a five year old, but she said that she would never bite so close to the stem 🤣
Unless your daughter also had very tiny mouse teeth, she's not lying
yeah, these comments that think the kid is to blame are wild.
And don't have rodent teeth
And five year olds are widely known for their grasp of things like reality and truth.
Our almost 4 yr old had attempted to write her name in purple crayon on our door (or at least the couple letters in her name she knows). My wife asks her if she knows who did it, and her answer is "No, maybe daddy". Likely story lol.
Though with this photo, those teeth marks look like rodent bites.
If you believe that, I've got a bridge to no where to sell you
" we don't have rodents" LMFAO....... they have a whole colony............
Yep, the rodents have them at this point.
Is her name Ramona Quimby?
https://preview.redd.it/cnukyggeez6g1.jpeg?width=350&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2276b798001547f72df499e7ee2d1d8355c15f90
First thing I thought of
does she have long skinny front teeth??? those are clearly gnawed by rodents.....
Clearly I'm just saying that my child takes bites out of apples and leaves them, not that her teeth marks look like that 🙄
Beaver is my guess 😂
I’ve spent way too long on this post…
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Had something similar happen when we woke up one morning and saw this banana on the counter, so we contacted our pest control company and they told us we had a rat. We have a doggie door and always left it so the dogs could go through the flap anytime day or night. They said a rat probably came by, felt the warmth of the doggie door, came inside, and climbed up onto the counter to find the banana.
We had to buy those cartoon type wooden mouse traps and put a few of them in the kitchen with some peanut butter on them. As soon as we went upstairs for the night, we heard one of the traps spring and came back downstairs to see a big ass rat bleeding out on the kitchen floor. After that, the plastic insert for the doggie door went in every night lol
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Rats really do love bananas. My boy would kill anyone if it meant he could get a taste of a banana
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Rats
Yes you do
I had to scroll down about 30 mins to find a comment about the ops over confidence. Now I understand why the world is such a shithole nowadays, nobody's paying attention and most living in denial.
"As far as we know"
... sorry, but you dont know very far
We had a rat climb up through the dryer vent outside, then eat through the aluminum hose to get into our house. They are very smart and find ways.
Now that’s frightening
You have a mouse in your house.
More like a rat in her flat.
She needs a cat in her hat
Either a toddler or a rat
What's the difference? 🫠
Well you can call someone to get rid of the rat
That's a rat. They're indiscriminate when they come to eating.
Mice/rat/rodent teeth marks fo sho
Ghost. No doubt about it.
Ghost of a rat.
My toddler has clearly broken into your house and had their way with your apples. I’m so sorry.
Probably not cats! Look at them little toof scrapes...
Kids or mice.. a mouse trap will catch either