A ratty mess

May 3, 2023 7:50 PM

We were excited to feed birds with a new bird feeder in our backyard. We bought it Saturday. Today we looked out the window at dusk and saw like 5-6 rats having a Ratatouille time under the feeder. Help.

We live in the city but in a neighborhood, and I’m not sure why I’m so shocked to see rats in a yard. But boy was I shocked. I don’t know if they’ve been feasting on the bird feed since Saturday, but there were so many! We have a neighborhood cat that tried to catch them and we watched them scatter to another yard and under our deck. I am very afraid. The landlord has already planned to send pest control in the next 2 weeks anyways because our garage is full of mice (not connected to the house) from the winter, but now we’ve attracted rats to the yard unintentionally. And now I’m afraid that seeing so many means they’ve moved to the deck, started a nest, now they’re in the walls—I’m spiraling.

We took down the feeder immediately and are sad that we can’t feed birds anymore, but I am very concerned that I have started a problem for our house and our neighbors. Our across the street neighbor has had a bird feeder for years but I guess it’s higher up?

My questions are: until the pest control comes in two weeks, is there anything I can do to help this fear of rats infesting our home from the backyard? And could they have burrowed into our home that quick after finding a bird feeder hung up on Saturday? Should I be throwing dry ice under our porch or something? Can we ever feed birds again? I bought the “No waste” seed in hopes that it would not drop on the ground and attract rats but….nope. Thank you.

posted by buttonedup to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

You've removed the food source, so the rats will go away. If your house wasn't a rat's nest previously, it won't have suddenly turned into a rat paradise overnight just because you had a bird feeder out for a few days. You're good. The pest control person can take care of any issues when he shows up.

Make sure the rest of your birdseed is stored securely though -- a rat would be overjoyed to find a half-full bag of bird seed in your garage.

FWIW, at the house where I grew up in California, we could never have a bird feeder for exactly this reason -- the seed dropped on the ground attracts rats. Presumably the solution would be a bird feeder that catches all the excess and prevents it from reaching the ground, but I'm not sure if that exists. My parents' solution was to switch to a hummingbird feeder (just sugar water, so no rat issues).
posted by mekily at 8:11 PM on May 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

It’ll be okay! Rats are smart and will move to new food sources. If you no longer have easy food for them, they will move, and since you’re in a city, chances are there is somewhere nearby that is a better spot for them.

Story time! I live on a suburban street but I’m the last house on the block next door to a grocery store and gas station which in turn is next to a pretty big crossroad. The back of my backyard shares an alley with the grocery store dumpsters. You can imagine that rats were a concern for me when we moved in. We’ve got a regular pest control service and they put out bait traps on the edges of my yard, a couple around my foundation and a few more by the back fence towards the dumpsters. The first check the pest control folks reported that the ones by the back fence were totally emptied of bait but the ones near my house still had about half the bait left. A quarter later, the ones near my house were still almost full, while the ones nearer the dumpsters were empty. Now, they only put bait traps in the back of my yard and they are only partially empty each quarter, although there is a full population of all the kinds of critters you can imagine would thrive around grocery store dumpsters and unpicked apple and pear trees. In my actual yard we have many little birds, crows and stellar’s jays, hummingbirds, the occasional squirrel, and chubby cottontail rabbits! I never need to put food out for any of these guys but I still get to watch them in my trees and bushes and eating my grass and dandelions. We had mouse droppings in the basement when we first moved in but we’ve never seen or heard a mouse since that first winter and no increase in droppings. It’s totally possible to have pet friendly pest control in an urban environment with a backyard, attract wildlife to observe, and not have rats. Just make sure any easy food sources for rodents are kept in containers that don’t release scent and are never scattered around your house. They will move!
posted by Mizu at 8:19 PM on May 3, 2023

if the type of feeder supports it, you could try:

A canopy/catcher that hangs under the feeder
Nijer seed
posted by ApathyGirl at 10:03 PM on May 3, 2023

The problem with feeders is birds are not neat and they scatter stuff all over the place, thus attract other critters, such as rats.

There are some home made solutions. One possibility is lace the birdseeds with pepper oil. Birds don't mind it, but rats apparently hate it. Another possibility is make sure your bird feeder has a gravity mechanism that closes when heavier weight birds or other critters landed on the feed ramp/stand/platform.

Here are the rest of the tips from Romney Pest Control.
posted by kschang at 10:52 PM on May 3, 2023

Rats were here before and rats will be here after. Rats are eternal, pretty much, as long as humans. Manage your current rat levels but don't worry you've done anything beyond your own situation.
posted by away for regrooving at 1:07 AM on May 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

And now I’m afraid that seeing so many means they’ve moved to the deck, started a nest, now they’re in the walls—I’m spiraling.

If there were rats within the fabric of your house, you would be able to hear them. They're surprisingly loud, and surprisingly clattery.

You're on edge about this, so you're probably going to be jumping at shadows for a bit. If you *do* hear something, think about what you would have assumed it was if you'd heard it a month ago; it's most likely that.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 2:27 AM on May 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

We have very aggressive and athletic squirrels to deter, and we’ve successfully used suet feeders that look like this on a shepherd’s hook pole with a top baffle and pole baffle. Larger, umbrella shaped pole baffles are sold, but they become a giant landing spot for bird poop. The same happens with the smaller baffle, but there’s less poop. Ha. The suet feeder doesn’t produce any waste on the ground, and I’ve never seen anything but a bird eating from it unlike our other squirrel proof feeders.
posted by defreckled at 5:40 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

If the feeder was up for less than a week, I think it's safe to assume the rats that found it were rats whose home range already included your yard. You haven't started a new problem. Now that you've taken down the feeder, there's no reason to think anything will be different from the way it was before the feeder. The rats will go back to just occasionally passing through your yard. Your house won't be any better a home for them than it was before the feeder. It's not like they were unaware that your house and yard existed until the seeds appeared and now that they know they're going to want to move in. They just didn't have much reason to spend time there before and the same is true now.
posted by Redstart at 6:42 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Your neighbor with a feeder is feeding birds and rats. The rat population will expand to match the food available. Plant things birds like; goldfinches like my thistle plants, etc. Your local Cooperative Extension Agency can help with advice on plants, birds, rat control.
posted by theora55 at 7:22 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you live in a city, there's rats. This is just a fact of cities and rats. You haven't seen them before because rats don't especially like being seen, and possibly never until now have they had a bounty good enough to risk it in your yard. If you remove your bird feeder you will likely stop seeing them, but they won't be gone. They will just be living peacefully alongside you as they were before.

That said, it's certainly unsettling to adjust to! Whatever your landlord is doing to take care of the mice will likely deter the rats as well, and you will see no more of them. But just FYI, on the off chance it becomes a real problem, your city may have a rat mitigation program that you can call upon. In Chicago it's a web portal where you can put the address of the sightings and they will come out and lay traps or poison within a few days.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:54 AM on May 4, 2023

Hi, I live in New York City, where we're having such a problem with rat infestation that our mayor has been fined twice for rats in his own building and we've recently hired a "rat czar". I've also been trauma-bonding with our exterminator who's been working on mitigating rats in our own building's walls and our back yard, and the community garden I belong to has "rat control 101" advice to mitigate rats in the garden as well. All of which is to say: boy, can I relate.

until the pest control comes in two weeks, is there anything I can do to help this fear of rats infesting our home from the backyard?

The good news is, rats are creatures of habit, so in their heads the only hot spot for food is in your backyard. They probably won't even check your house out right away. And the biggest way to make sure that rats don't get inside your home is...don't give them the opportunity to get in.

Start with the building itself first. Take a walk around your house, studying the foundation for any possible entry points - and keep in mind that rats can fit into a hole the size of a quarter. And look for anything - a crack, a random open-ended pipe, etc. If you see anything, note where it is and point it out to the exterminator when he shows up - but in the meantime, if it fits, you can fill holes in with dirt or gravel. (We have a bunch of white marble chips at our garden and I grabbed some to plug up some holes I saw.) If it's a pipe, a piece of chicken wire covering over the end of the pipe would be best (but have your super do this, or ask the exterminator to ask the super instead).

Then check the yard, looking for any trash collecting, overgrown brush, obvious rat holes, etc. If you see a hole, note the spot and point it out to the exterminator. Or, you can blanket the whole thing with more gravel if you've got it. But if you only see loose trash and overgrown brush, point that out to the exterminator, and they can assess how to handle it (and communicate to your landlord what they should do).

But don't be surprised if you don't see anything obvious. Rats can be "commuters" - they'll live in one spot but eat and party in another spot. The rats that are partying in my building's back yard actually live in holes in the back yard of a neighbor's building, and the rats that have set up camp in my community garden are actually just using them to sleep in and they're going out to eat in the trash of the restaurant 2 doors down the street. So the rats you saw in your yard and at your feeder may actually live in a neighbor's yard, and just came over that once because "oh cool, new bird feeder, let's check that place out."

As for "omigod what if they're already in the walls or my deck" - if they were there, you would know already. Trust me - when there were rats in my own walls, they were loud enough to wake me up in the middle of the night. We've fixed that problem, fortunately (it's been months since I heard anything inside the walls), but the fact that you haven't heard anything in your walls yet means there's still plenty of time to make sure it doesn't get there. And yes, there is little chance that a rat would suddenly decide to target your house unless you're giving them a reason to do so (i.e., you're suddenly starting to leave unbagged garbage strewn around the foundation or something).

As for the bird feeder - sadly I would give that up. I had to do that myself as well and I'm bummed about that, but it is contributing to the rat problem. If you still want to do something "birdy" - try a bird bath or a birdhouse instead.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:58 AM on May 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

My spouse and I feed birds, squirrels, and feral cats in our yard. We also have a lot of rats. Some of them have figured out how to get into our basement (I know because I put cameras down there), but they don't do it very often, and they never venture upstairs or into the walls. Frankly, the rats don't really bother me that much. We put humane traps outside, and we occasionally trap a few rats (usually juveniles), but the humane traps don't really work very well. The older rats are apparently too smart to go into them. We refuse to use poison or kill traps. So, basically, we just peacefully co-exist with the rats. My spouse is more upset about them than I am, but there isn't a lot that either one of us can do.
posted by alex1965 at 8:53 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]