I took the bike out last weekend and gave her a good wash before a leisurely ride. When I got home, I let her cool off and then under the cover she went until I was ready for a ride today.

The first signs I had that something was amiss were three turds on top of the cover. Uh oh. This can't be good. A quick glance around the garage confirmed my suspicions. Rat turds everywhere. On the floor, on my boat, my surfboard, my minibike! EVERYWHERE! Then I notice a pile of debris on the floor, under a wire shelf. Bird seed. My wife bought some bird seed to feed all the little birdies that like to visit the backyard this time of year. But it wasn't birds that had found the seed. It seems that rats, a lot of rats, had been climbing onto the shelf, eating the bird seed and letting the hulls fall to the floor. What a mess. On top of all the turds, now I've got bird seed spread all over my garage. And worse, I've got muddy little prints on EVERY surface, EVERY item in my garage!

After assessing the situation, I faced my greatest fear and took the cover off my Street Glide. Sure enough, my bike, my baby, is covered in grimy, muddy, rat prints! The bastards climbed under the cover and went creeping around! Hopefully that's the worst of the damage.

Needless to say, I've got a major Spring Cleaning project going on my garage today; a project that I expect will take several days to complete. But it also goes without saying that some little rodents are gonna pay! I'm killin' all of em-- No Quarter!

If any of you have suggestions on how to handle this sudden infestation (there was no sign of them last weekend, seems they moved in during the freeze we had this week) I'd love to hear them. But for now, I gotta go back outside and clean up rat turds. What a shitty way, pardon the pun, to spend an otherwise lovely Saturday. And I ain't even got any beer. Now THAT sucks!

 

Is getting a new wife an option?

 

I'd say get a cat, but I've had bad luck with cats climbing onmy bike scratching the tank and punching holes in the seats with their claws...[sm=signs003.gif]

 

First I'd figure out how they got INTO the garage and plug that entrance up. That will keep them out.

I would NOT put rat poison in the garage as that will attract them back into the garage. Just like the bird seed did.

 

Check your tires real good, rodents love rubber. Had a problem with them a few years back. I cleaned house with 22 cal. bird shot took 2 evenings. Got 4 of them after I plugged the hole and they were trying to leave. [sm=shootshoot.gif]

 

I'd clean up every bit of seed and put traps and poison in the garage where the seed was. That way you'll get the dumb ones. If you simply plug em out, they may just figure out how to get to the kitchen. Worse then that, they'll multiply like rabbits and you'll have em forever whether you think they're there or not. I'd do this before any absence of food (seed).

Then I'd splain to the wife that while feeding the birds is neat, it attracks rats better then birds.

 

Get glue traps. That way they don't die in your walls and you can hear the scream when they get caught. Sometimes you get lucky and get 2-3 in one trap.

 

Check your cables, they love to chew on stuff like that. Keep an eye for exposed wiring and do a safety ride to make sure all is well.

 

I had them in my Attic. I used the big plastic jaw traps at Home Depot or Lowes. My builder did not foam around the AC pipe going into my Attic. Had a bunch of them. I got think I got 14 of them. Wife swears that I got 20. Plug the entrance and set up the traps. Use peanut butter or some type of fruit. I used raisins they did the trick.

 

Back in 2000, I was working on my bike in the garage and removed the outer fairingon my 99 Electra Glide classic to upgrade the speakersand lo and behold a whole family of mice scurried out of a nest built right up next to one of my speakers....on the inside of the fairing. They had not chewed on anything but MAN I was pissed!
Poison and traps.