Building a Better Rat Trap

We continue to wage our War on Rats in our barn with sporadic and limited success. Benjamin has shot a few off the rafters with rat shot. The elusive vermin somehow are too smart to go into a standard rat trap or a glue trap. I don't want to use poison as I don't want our chickens to eat the poisoned dead rats and end up having poison residue in the eggs that we eat.

At one point we had pretty much wiped them out, but with the onset of colder weather, I can only assume our barn with a hayloft full of hay looked like a sunny beach in South Florida to someone living in the North as rats from the neighboring woods appear to be wintering in the loft.  I saw several rats with Hawaiian shirts, RayBan's, and flip flops unpacking in our barn.  They are not good housekeepers and they are leaving their 'calling cards' everywhere.

Rat poop in the feed room

So I began looking for new and creative rat eradication techniques and I stumbled on the homemade rat trap idea below by searching on YouTube.  All you need is a 5 gallon bucket, an empty broth or tomato sauce can, some heavy wire, or in this case a skewer, some peanut butter and water.  Simply drill a couple of holes on opposite sides of a bucket.  Punch a hole in the center of a can with liquid in it and drain out the contents. Punch another hole in the bottom of the can.  Now run your wire/skewer through one side of the bucket, then through and through the can and then through the other side of the bucket.  The can should spin freely on the skewer.  Bend the wire/skewer to secure it to the backside of the bucket.  Liberally slather the can with peanut butter.  Fill the bucket at least halfway with water and lean a piece of a board against the top of the bucket to make a ramp for the rats/mice.

A better mouse trap?

The idea is that the peanut butter will lure the rats to climb up on the bucket.  When they climb on the lip of the bucket and run across the skewer to get the peanut butter, they'll step on the can to start snacking and the can will spin and dump them into a watery grave.  (C'mon in.  The water's fine.)

A bird's eye view

Hopefully in a few days I'll post some pictures of a rat or two swimming in the bucket.