Rats under the sidewalk?
Hello all A bluestone panel of the sidewalk in front of our house appears to have a progressive problem with the earth beneath it disappearing (or apparently so). The grout between this panel and those adjacent to it is also developing holes. I put a lot of sand into the hole, and it doesn’t help…
Hello all
A bluestone panel of the sidewalk in front of our house appears to have a progressive problem with the earth beneath it disappearing (or apparently so). The grout between this panel and those adjacent to it is also developing holes. I put a lot of sand into the hole, and it doesn’t help for very long. My neighbor experienced the same thing and she was informed that rats were the culprit. They lifted the panel and put in concrete and ground glass and that solved the problem. Does this sound reasonable to anyone? Does anyone know what the composite of glass and concrete is called and where I could find some?
Thanks in advance for any insights…
Please dont release rats into the park.
We had a similar problem that was compounded by a leak from an adjacent fire hydrant. From what I learned during the process, it’s not a great idea to set blue stone in cement due to the freeze/thaw cycle. When I was doing the sand packing you described, quite a few neighborhood old timers told me about the ground glass thing. I think they were referring to something homemade like just smashing some bottles and laying them down in the sand base. The exterminator suggested tracking powder and bait applied when refilling the sand base.
And one guy gave me an extensive lesson which involved using chimney flares to smoke out the rats. He said you could set up traps at their exit holes and catch them and let them loose in Prospect Park where hawks and owls would eat them. I couldn’t picture myself carrying around a trap full of rats, nor did dumping far from my house seem like anything but foisting off my problem on others.
What we did do to get rid of the rats was to get most of the neighbors involved with using the same exterminator outside their houses. We stopped storing any garbage outside or under the stoop and mined our place with tracking poweder and bait stations, which we check monthly. We also contacted the food businesses nearby and 311ed the ones who seemed to just blow us off. One of them seems to have found a wild cat or two to patrol the alleyway behind the stores. We haven’t seen any rat holes on our property in a while but I think we just have the population in a holding pattern, nothing more.