Rat 🐀 stories........

Mad Dog_2

What's the biggest Rat 🐀 you've ran in to in a crawl space and in  general?  You guys go first.   I got a few Rat 🐀 stories....Mad Dog 🐕 

hot_rod

How do you measure a rat?
They all have looked huge to me, especially in dim light when you are on your belly!

Jamie Hall

Not fair. When I was a kid, we used to go to the local dump for target practice... never measured the beggars, but some of them were pretty big.

Never measured the few I've seen on the farm, either -- we don't have many, or that often. Usually the cats or foxes or hawks get them before they die of lead poisoning...

SlamDunk

When I worked for dad who was a super near Union Sq in Manhattan, around 1980, there was a garbage strike and our court yard was shared with a Mcdonalds. The trash bag pile was a mountain and at night, was swarming with thousands of rats.

But the largest rat I have ever seen was over ten years ago in my parents backyard in the bronx. It was as large as a small pig. My blood turned to ice. Apparently, there are Gambian rats running around up there.

I found this article which takes place in our neighborhood.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083341/The-Beast-Bronx-Three-foot-rat-New-York-City-shoe-shop.html

Mad Dog_2

Holy Moly!  Rats 🐀 on Steroids..Do know that poor guy got arrested and lost his job over pitchforking that vermin?  Never seen those Gambian Pouched ones, all Norway Rats.  The biggest living rats I've encountered were the body size of large cats (which is huge for a Norway Rat) plus the tail. The  Public housing crawl spaces which were about 4 feet high so u could crouch and stay on plywood strips were sometimes nasty.  As a 2nd year Apprentice, I was in charge of running, fitting and Soldering hundreds of feet of 2" Copper Domestic Hot Water under the Dorms of Rikers Island Prison in Hells Gate. My Foreman , Joey D (RIP) stayed outside and passed me what I needed.  Great learning experience.  There were some monster Rats 🐀 under there, but The C.O.s had colonies of Feral cats that kept them down.  In a Long Island 🏝 Housing project, I came across a skeleton of a Monster rat...It was 30% bigger than the biggest live rats I saw...eeeewww.  The Trash Compactor rooms are the worst.  I saw a Garbage bag wriggling, so I wailed at Brick at it....like the March of The Wooden Soldiers...One, two, three, four, five, six rats ran out!  We built out a High End Beauty parlor in Manhattan.  They ran freely through the drop ceilings...The poor ladies getting a wash and blow for $300 bucks had no clue!  I spent Much of my summer youth on our close friend's Thoroughbred Horse Farm near Saratoga Racetrack.  They always had friendly barn cats 🐈 that stayed outdoors year round.  They were superfast and agile but very beefy.  I was around 12 and I went to scoop oats out of the 55 Gallon drum without looking and something furry ran across my hand ✋.  Freaked out and dropped the scoop in their.  Big Dave picked up one of the kittens that was only around 10 weeks old, dropped him in, closed the lid and All you heard was squealing and real violent ruckus...I was very worried about Kitty 😺....He picks up the lid when things went quiet and he smiled: "He's a good ratter!"   The kitten had the rat which was almost as big as he, by the throat in a death bite.  Very impressed.  I used to raise pet Rats & Mice as a teenager and would sell them to the Pet Store..Rabbits too!  I got a Big kick out if walking around town with Ben & Socrates my black and Brown Pets on my shoulders....ha ha..Rats and Mice will not usually share terrortories...One day Ben & Socrates escaped their tank and massacred around 30 mice we had in another tank..killed them all...for sport...disturbing....They usually will avoid you, but if cornered will charge and attack you.  I was going down a dark outside basement entrance under the Pizza Place on a no heat in Winter.  Halfway down the stairs my Maglight sees a good sized rats charging up the stairs at me! I barely had time to back up.  Turns out his burrow was a large hole on the next riser I was about to step to.  Freaky....Last story...We had a work trailer that we serviced that had a a Toilet Tied in to the sewer..not a Portopotty...Every morning the work crew would see water all over the bathroom floor and Potatoe chip bags gnawed..There were no holes were anything could get in and no one was there at night.  One of the guys hunted and set up a Trail Camera in the Bathroom...Every night several rats were coming through the tight trap of the bowl and gallivanting through the night....The Closed the lid and put a Belgian block on it...Solved...but would you be able to relax on that toilet...not I.....Mad Dog 🐕 🤣 

hot_rod

Under restaurants where you find the large rats.
My neighbor growing up in WNY trapped muskrats. They could get quite large also. Lots of different types of rats out there.

Wasn't there a large talking rat on the Ninja Mutant Turtle series?

EdTheHeaterMan

"You Dirty Rat!"

I think I just dated myself

Mad Dog_2

"...you killed my brutha..."  mad Dog 🐕 

Mad Dog_2

I have an  Irish Horseman friend who has a Jack Russell, who are  bred as ratters, like Dachshunds. He'll lend him out to people/buildings, farms & barns with bad rat 🐀 problems.  He'll kill dozens over a few days and line them up like a bird dog, so you're proud of him.  Everyone's happy!  Mad Dog 🐕 

JakeCK

Leaving a movie theater some years back I watched one crawl down into the sewer. At first I thought it was a raccoon until the headlights lit it up. That was a big rat. Even more impressive was how it squashed down to fit in the sewer grate.

SlamDunk

I wouldnt have fired anyone willing to go against that beast in my basement.

Mad Dog_2

Yes...mice and rats 🐀 can make themselves skinny as a dime when needed.  When clients and co workers marvel at my squeezing in to tiny holes and narrow passages...even with my  big "corporation"
I tell em, I can morph in to mouse 🐁 shape-shifter as needed... 😂 .  Mad Dog 🐕 

JUGHNE

The Famous Manaranjan Rat,

In 1975, sitting with fellow travelers in New Delhi, India, about midnight at a all night cafe bar.
We were having ice coffee and observed the largest rat ever walk thru the outdoor seating area.
No one panicked or said anything, the locals nor us westerners.

We had been traveling overland to get to India for about 1 year and you gradually get used to a lot of things you don't see in the west.

This guy just wallowed thru and actually hit tables, knocking them aside and did upend a chair.
This was heavy steel furniture that you might have on your patio today.

He continued along and went under the swing doors into the kitchen, two workers were hanging on the doors and just watched him move thru, as if he were another employee.......this place did have pretty good food and we realized that this guy was well fed, even on the vegan diet that we all were eating.


These travels for about 18 months make one appreciate this country even more.
Here you can drink the water just about anywhere and survive the next few days.
There you drink the water and maybe you are ok and maybe not.

Here you push a lever and the WC flushes things away.
There you squat, do your job, use the water can and left hand cleaning, and maybe things will go down the drain. No hand sink in sight, BTW, only use your right hand in the community rice bowl, somehow we all lived thru it. Then be cautious in the street as you may see your deposit floating by in the sewer.

Here you know the price of most things and there is seldom any bargaining.
There you have to negotiate the price of everything except perhaps a cup of bad boiled tea.

It was a great trip, education and experience. Overland from England to Nepal.

Tim_D

Had a guy from Texas call in to Wirsbo back in the day. He wanted to know how to get his warranty coverage on his PEX. I explained that he would need to send me some pictures of the leaks and a sample of the pipe with a leak in it so that we could try to determine the cause of the leaks. He tells me that he knows why its leaking, the rats are chewing it. I explained that rodent damage was not a manufacturers defect and was not covered. I suggested that he either get an exterminator or a cat or two. He said he had four cats that were terrified because the rats were so big. When I was a kid my dad used to take me to the dump at night to shoot rats. I would guess that some of them were well over a pound.

EBEBRATT-Ed

@Jamie Hall, @Tim_D

LOL the good old days! We used to go to the dump at night. Of course, everything got thrown in the dump back then so the rats had plenty of food.


We would turn the car headlights off and sure enough in a few minutes the dump would be covered in rats. We would switch the headlights on and as the rats ran for cover, we would start blasting. Shut the lights off and they came right back and we would do that over and over.

Mad Dog_2

Oh my God...that would be fun....My older Brother Big Bart did many years of Private Eye and Personal Bodyguard work for a very old and well established security firm.  When they didn't have Walter Cronkite or a  famous actress to guard, he'd do, boring overnight  surveillance work, staking out a Furrier....They were long boring, freezing 🥶 nights in his car.  Sometimes, I'd get to tag along and I'd bring my sleeping bag.  I had a Crosman 760 Powermaster 10 pump Air rifle.  We'd pick off Rats 🐀 all night long...it was great fun and a good deed.  When the Rats 🐀 are too big and scary, time for Jack Russells, Dachshunds or Rat Terriers. There are fearless and great to watch work.  Mad Dog  🐕 

A1Boss

How about a foot long Cockroach. ??

JakeCK

A1Boss said:

How about a foot long Cockroach. ??

What the... You got an infestation of late Permian period cockroaches? Lol

Mad Dog_2

"Giant water bugs 🐛 " look like they are in the same Family (La Coochracha...).  I hear conflicting accounts...Anything that lives in a Sewer is vermin to me...we have ways of making them disappear....yuckie....Mad Dog 

Intplm.

Eighteen inches. Yikes!!

Steve_Wheels

I owned a supply house that was attached to a Moose Lodge that served food, of course we had no food. I guess the rats liked the dry warm place I called an office and would camp out on my desk. I got tired of shooting them with my pellet gun at night so I set about a dozen sticky traps.... what a problem. I walked in the next morning and all you could hear were a dozen rats, bigger than a size 14 boot, squealing. Shortly there after I was giving them all swimming lessons, would you believe none learned how?

Speaking of swimming, I was 350 miles off the coast of Costa Rica in the Pacific Ocean, hanging out and having a beer with a few friends when a huge rat ran across the floor. The poor girl sitting across from me screamed and asked how the rat got on board... I told her it must have swum out and climbed the anchor line. I assured her that it would swim home later.. HAHAHAHAHA.

Mad Dog_2

Holy Cow 🐄 😳 Steve WHEELS Weiland! Been many yrs.  Mad Dog  🐕 

Mad Dog_2

That's what those big discs on Navy and cruise ships  are for on the Mooring ropes..I had a big mouse 🐁 problem in my barn a few yrs ago..Tried glue traps.. alot of em...no dice...bought old school snap  traps with peanut butter.. 8 fatties in 3 days!  Mad Dog 🐕 🤣 

Tim_D

Giant water bug. I was in Olongapo City, Phillipines in the spring of 1984. Brushing my teeth one morning and I see these pretty sizeable antennae coming out of the lav overflow. Turned out to be a water bug about four inches long. They get huge.

Mad Dog_2

Yuckky...The South Pacfic has Giant insects...Mad Dog 🐕 

Jamie Hall

Mad Dog_2 said:

Yuckky...The South Pacfic has Giant insects...Mad Dog 🐕 

Indeed. big bugs. little bugs. big rats. little rats. other critters. the VC. not at all sure which of the lot was worse...

Mad Dog_2

So, you where in The 'Nam, Jamie? Didn't know this.  Thank you for your service my friend!  Mad Dog  🐕 

Jamie Hall

Actually CIA, attached to a Special Forces group embedded with a Hmong ville in the highlands on the border with Laos. Never could get the hang of the language...

bburd

@Jamie Hall :  When do you sleep, 007? 😎

Jamie Hall

bburd said:

@Jamie Hall :  When do you sleep, 007? 😎

You get to be my age, most of it on the fast track, you have stories to tell...

Mad Dog_2

Damn, son!  So cool. One of my good buddies from my American Legion post, Paul Kane was an Army Ranger Scout that lived and fought with the Montanards in the Central Highlands for 2 yrs.  As a huge student of History, And Military History, my specialty is French Indo-China from the late 1800s, Through Dien Bien Phu, to the Fall of Saigon in 75.  I watched TV with my Mom Colleen as a 5 yr old and Cried watching the POWs come home...Left a tremendous impression on me. All that's left in my Post is the 'Nam guys..As patriotic and courageous as any soldier in any War.  Great guys.  Thank you for your CIA service!
Did you ever get to meet Wild Bill Donovan?  Mad Dog 🐕 

Jamie Hall

No, he was before my time. I was over there in 1964, and was with the Firm for a couple of years afterward stateside-- but informally ever since, now and them. The Montagnards and the Hmong were (and those who' made it out when we bailed still are) wonderful, loyal people. Two of the men I was with actually married Hmong women and made wonderful families. Not many left from that era... and it was a VERY different era.