I may or may not be hosting my chat today...we have rats in our basement, and nothing makes me happier than the thrill of the hunt. I've got a new air rifle (625 FPS .177 ammunition, 12 rd semi-automatic, CO2 powered.) and I'm hunting now. They've invaded my turf, and it is on.

Grin your serious arent you

When I was small my Dads friends used to come up to our small town to visit from Toronto

This was back in the day when the local dump was just a piece of property where everybody just took there unwanted whatever and dumped it there

Back in the days before envionmental issues

There bigest thrill when the came to visit was going to the dump and going rat hunting

They take there guns and go there and shoot rats for hours on end

Strange memory that I had forgotten all about

Thanks for the trip back in time

Absolutely serious. Rats are like deer, just smaller.

I'm either dealing with Norway or Black rats, if anyone can help me identify so I can study up the anatomy and maximize my kill-potential, that'd be great.

Gonna serve Ratatui for everybody? :D

i don't have rodents thankfully, but i'm not so ashamed anymore about my determination and obsession with killing the ants invading my house!! i had written a post about this a little while ago and the exterminator rid me of them instantly. these are fire ants. they mean business and everywhere i thought i had blocked them, they came into my house somewhere else...now they're BAAACK...
they're coming in from behind my kitchen stove...my kitchen is immaculate. only the wandering of an ant could make me understand the microscopic buffet i have set for them!!! they were crawling all over my oil cruet one morning (very early) and i am so disgusted with bugs that i donned my dish gloves and tried to throw it in the sink to douse the bottle clean..when the cork top slid out of my hand and it crashed on the floor with a million little ants all over the kitchen floor...i FREAKED...i grabbed a candlelighter and toasted them! every single one.
and now.
i'm the terminator of any ant that i see. my husband is irrated that i'm using my candle lighter as a flamethrower but i don't care. i bought additional ones so that i wouldn't run out of fire to kill them.
part of me felt guilty b/c i have never taken pleasure out of such cruelty..but i found myself reacting instinctively- i feel invaded, i worry about my son being bitten, and i'm plain disgusted. hopefully i'm not denting my karma too bad.
who am i kidding? i'll be a soldier ant next life...

Sprayed window cleaner kills ants on contact in a few seconds.

i've done bleach. i've done dish soap..basically any chemical that i know will kill such a tiny ugly thing. the list is too long. think: all household chemicals,
but burning is so much faster it seems. they're gauranteed to die. w/ bleach they just struggle for a bit..when i vacuum them up- i see them trying to dig a path through all the vacuum scum. so i guess, fire is actually relatively humane....

i've heard ants can live 14 days underwater... ech- the other thing they hate is chalk. they won't walk over a chalk line.

i put diazinon down every spring around the foundation to keep them from coming in. when we first bought this place, they were all over. granted, they weren't fire ants, but nevertheless they creeped me out..

If I see cockroaches in my room, those that cannot fly, I will just simply use tissues to catch them up and throw them into the chute.
Is the gun u mentioned for real??

We use cayenne pepper for ants and dogs for rats.

If you contact a local Jack Russel terrier group or any of the more utilitarian terrrier groups you might find people willing to put on a pretty good blood sport show if you find that type of thing interesting. I do but I'm a whacko. :)

I don't like rodents. I don't like rodents, I don't like rodents.... don't like them I say!
ian.

The gun he describes is pretty low powered, kind of like a training rifle. It wouldn't kill a person, just hurt, unless you got someone in the eye. I supposed it would knock a rat over & maybe break it's ribs or something or kill if you hit in the head. I used to have one as a kid, we shot it in the basement, knocking over cans & putting holes in paper targets. There is no gunpowder explosion, it is air pressure powered.

PS cinammon is also supposed to repel ants.

Thanks Paul. I'll be checking out the cinammon as it seems to be easier to come by in quantitiy.
ian