Rats on my Bed-Stuy block!

I’ve started to notice rats scurrying into buildings on my block. There’s a huge rat problem in our area but this is the first I’m noticing them right on our block. We had an exterminator come to deal with an infestation in our own home about a year ago. I’m wondering what I or our Block association can do to eliminate them.

juniperflood

in General Discussion 1 year and 7 months ago

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justinromeu26 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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What jeremy says about cats being a deterrent is what i meant by not having seen any around when we had a cat. We let her out often. But i cannot say she would have attacked a rat and she was a pet so i am not sure i wanted her attacking any

In so far as the cat i had that used to kill rats. That cat was killing what i think were black rats in wilmington, nc and they were smaller than the ones we have here.

Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Colonial, you’re welcome to visit my neighborhood around St Johns recreation center to see that when there are many feral cats around there are not so many rats around. No need for the cats to kill rats. Their mere presence likely encourages rats to scoot. Whether they are killing rats or merely deterring, I still like my cat problem more than your rat problem

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Some cats kill rats. I had a tom cat once that killed them and lined them up perfectly on my back step for me. We also did not have rats here until our own cat died at the start of covid.

colonialrevival | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Unfortunately, cats don’t kill rats and it’s been studied a number of times. Rats are too big, and cats prefer easier food. Setting out rat poison creates an ecological disaster far greater than the rats it will kill, as it will inadvertently poison a number of other local animals both directly via the poison and indirectly via the dead, poisoned carcasses.

My entire block stores our trash and sets it for sanitation in rolling totes with lids that close all the way. Funnily enough, there are no rats. We also have never had to buy rat poison or traps. Wild coincidence!

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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i did not have luck with spring traps but then again i was not using provolone.

Jeremy may have addressed this above and i did not bother to read his entire post (sorry) but this is where i went wrong with the poisons and i am tired of using them because i worry about the hawks and opossums .

with the poisons, you had better kill them ALL at once. for me it took about two 16 block bags of tom cat. it works but the smell was nasty. Eventually the rats returned because the food was a few doors away. after this initial hit, i would put smaller amounts of poison out and would kill a rat here and there by dropping a block in their holes. what happen was, the rats that did not die realized what was killing the others and eventually they pushed the blocks of poison back out of the hole and into my yard. the movie ratatouille was not far off the mark.

keep in mind, the rats are really smarter than us. as soon as they realize something is killing them, they stop doing it. Us people, scientists and statisticians keep telling us what we are doing wrong and we keep doing it. the rats do not need scientists and statisticians – they have superior innate intelligence.

MDR | 1 year and 7 months ago

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I agree that managing the trash better would help but the rats are resourceful and will eat almost anything. When we had a bunch of rats in our back yard last summer I used a classic spring trap and kept setting it (with provolone cheese) until I got them all. Surprisingly, they were gone completely until this summer and then we only had a few, which we took care of with the trap. I think they are somewhat territorial and that rats from other places don’t necessarily spread to where there are no rats. If there is food they stay put in the place they know. So it does seem like there is hope if you actually kill the rats near you they will be gone, at least for a while.

hasibur.rahman07 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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What happened with the Mayor’s rat czar? – https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/249-23/mayor-adams-anoints-kathleen-corradi-nyc-s-first-ever-rat-czar-#/0

Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Rat poison does not stop rats from coming back. It makes dead rat bodies that smell worse than the live rats that come next. Reduce (because you will never remove) rat food, block rat access, set trash out appropriately, and/or do what I do and move in next to a neighborhood cat feeder. I like my cat problem more than your rat problem ?

Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Rat poison does not stop rats from coming back. It makes dead rat bodies that smell worse than the live rats that come next. Reduce (because you will never remove) rat food, block rat access, set trash out appropriately, and/or do what I do and move in next to a neighborhood cat feeder. I like my cat problem more than your rat problem ?

wasingleton3 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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I’ve been using regularly topped up bait boxes. They seem to be doing the trick. I can;t keep the things filled up.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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“tight fitting lids” means the rats can open them. i watch them do it here.

if the people who are the offenders (putting trash out in bags) are complaining about rats, go around at night and take photos of the chew marks on the bags and show them (it worked here). also, with my immediate neighbor, i had run out of ammonia at some point and for a few days i began pouring gasoline in her trash can (and mine when i was still missing my lid). when she found out what i was doing she went out a bought a lid. And no, in most cases a lit cigarette will not ignite gas; i tried that when i was a teenager (it helped that my neighbor thought her trash can was going to blow up). sometimes people do not know what is good for them until they understand what is bad for them and sometimes we have to help them understand.

Jeremy said “our city does not have a good …” our city cannot do anything right (or they stop short; they make laws but stop short in reach and enforcement). they have a rat program and offer help. they also have an on-line rat infestation map and whe n they find an infestation in a yard, they color that lot yellow on the map. So the rats we had here were living under my shed. i so wanted to ask the city for help with the rat problem but after seeing the yellow colored lots on the rat infestation map, was i going to call the city to report that the rats (that my neighbors were feeding) lived under my shed? and I, but not them, get tagged? (when we got the new rat tzar i was going to call her office and explain the counter productive stupidity she was facing with her new job).

the only good thing about having rats was one day my teen son was looking out the back window and watched as a massive hawk came down and grabbed one and flew off. that night i did something I don’t off do: I prayed. I prayed for the hawk, that he did not ingest any poison with that rat.

we’re in trouble; the rats are smarter than the rat tzar and the collective city council combined.

Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Spray foam at exterior is not a good permanent solution for pest block. Our city does not have a good anti rat garbage collection system. Leaving garbage at the curb overnight whether in cans that have “tight fitting lids” or not seems quite barbaric given the technology we have at our disposal. But hey, we’ve always done this way, right? One day we will get tired enough of rats and later and later nightly curb set out rules and we will come up with actual good solutions. Or we will keep complaining and pointing fingers at neighbors, mayors, exterminators, etc.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 7 months ago

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if you have people living near you who keep putting trash out in bags or put their trash cans out without lids, start pouring ammonia on the bags, where it will pool. also, put ammonia in the the trash cans. rats and people hate the smell of ammonia.

colonialrevival | 1 year and 7 months ago

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A street by me is attempting to deal with their rat issue by closing the burrows and it’s become a comical fools errand. They’ve sprayed spray foam everywhere, filled the ground with steel mesh, poured loads of concrete. They’ve spent a year doing this to no effect. Never once have they considered an alternative to how they dispose of refuse.

Even if you close up all the burrows, as long as there is a food source—bags of trash placed out on the curb every other day—they’ll find somewhere new. The only sure fire way is to get rid of the food source.

Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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You and your neighbors have to close their burrows access. Is there earth they are burrowing thru? It has to be closed. Concrete will work if covering the whole area. Reinforcing hardware cloth under gravel can work too and also look better but you have to do it well or weeds will sprout and/or rats will peel away the edges. Close holes in walls, close gaps in deteriorated metal gates at sides of buildings, etc.

colonialrevival | 1 year and 7 months ago

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  string(15) "wp_capabilities"
  ["roles"]=>
  array(0) {
  }
  ["allcaps"]=>
  array(1) {
    ["participant"]=>
    bool(true)
  }
  ["filter"]=>
  NULL
  ["site_id":"WP_User":private]=>
  int(1)
}

Put your trash in sealed containers that can roll out to the curb for collection. It’s the only way. Anything else is just a variety of mental gymnastics and animal cruelty.