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Algiers has the biggest rats I've ever seen. They used to come out of the sewers at night. I pointed some out to a bloke once. The bloke, a member of the Securite Militaire (never mind the accents), insisted that they were cats. Really made me laugh.
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Hamelin Town Council has a very good eradication service
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Sounds like a line from the Scout campfire song:
There were rats, rats as big as alley cats, in the stores, in the quartermasters stores etc
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I shot one day before yesterday, killed it stone dead (or so I thought), picked it up by the tail and the bounder curled around and sunk it's teeth right through the end of my leather gardening glove! luckily my finger didn't reach the end! ;-)
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The cats have found a rats nest in the field behind our garden and keep bringing me young ones about 5'' long excluding the tail which they chase around the house until they die of fright.
They think I'm pleased with their 'present' for me while I'm standing on a chair chain smoking in fright.
Current rate of progress is at least 2 a day so I think the parents will die of trying to re-produce at this rate!
Oh, the joys of living in the country.
Pat
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>..picked it up by the tail and the bounder curled around and sunk it's teeth right through the end
>of my leather gardening glove!
Only rats we get around here are tree rats. I always give them a prod with my shoe after I've shot one.
Biggest rat I've ever seen in the UK was in Sheffield. I was driving through Netherthorpe where rows of old terraced houses were being demolished for redevelopment. A load of dust flew up as a wall collapsed and this thing legged it across the road in front of me. It was easily two feet long excluding the tail and had a rear end that Beyoncé would envy.
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Brown rats grow to maxumum of 10 inches in body length plus a similar length for the tail
You saw a four foot long rat?
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He didn't stop to tell what type of rat he was and from about 10yds away he was certainly MUCH bigger than 10 inches.
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If it was a rat there are only two species endemic in th UK , Rattus Norvegicus, the Brown or Sewer Rat and Rattus Rattus, the Black Rat. which is smaller. Perhaps it was a cat.
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Definitely not a cat, the gait is completely different. It was typically rodent with a small head and fat a55.
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Well the likelihood of finding a four foot long rat is about the same as seeing a fifteen foot tall man so you were very lucky.
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Ok CGN, it was a cat in a rat costume if that satisfies you.
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Perhaps Kevin the giant rat of Sheffield was a little like the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which, as Sherlock Holmes declared, the world is not prepared.
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>>
>> Perhaps Kevin the giant rat of Sheffield
How do we know the rat's name?
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Oh God, I've given the punctuation pedants an argument. :-)
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Might have been a Coypu....Sheffield may have an infestation. We have a Eucalyptus in the front garden, I'm sure there are Koalas in it...tried to get a spray to get rid but none seem available and the man in the diy shop looked at me in a disturbing manner !
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Well it was alongside Crookes Valley park which contains a lake but it's also surrounded by lots of student accommodation so I don't think a Coypu would last long there Ted.
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Coypu, farmed for their fur (Nutria), either escaped or were released and bred extensive feral populations in several parts of UK. They're also present in France where they're known as Myocasters or Ragondin and are often confused with Otters.
Unless the students hunted them down for food they'd co-exist happily.
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> Unless the students hunted them down for food they'd co-exist happily.
>>
I wouldn't imagine they'd be very tasty.
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Oh I'm sure there's people that eat them, whether it's tasty or not that's another matter!
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According to various sites it tastes like rabbit and is very tender. Since coypu or swamp rat as it is known in the US are entirely herbivorous they should be fine to eat. Apparently Merlot is the best wine to accompany a swamp rat.
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>> According to various sites it tastes like rabbit and is very tender. Since coypu or
>> swamp rat as it is known
Two foot rats then! If they can have fig trees on the banks of the river Don, we shouldn't be surprised.
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I'll tell 'er. She's orf to Morrison's tomorrow.
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Well do let us know how you get on.
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Coypu infested the waterways of East Anglia during the 1960s, 70s and early 80s. My understanding is that they were completely eradicated in 1989 - if they hadn't been then they'd presumably have re-infested the country.
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Yes they we all trapped and destroyed. They had escaped from Nutria farms in the 1930s and by the 1960s had become a real nuisance mainly due to their habit of building U shaped tunnels in the river banks which then collapsed as a result from passing boats. They are vegetarian animals and mainly fed on the reed beds but would also eat crops from the fields being particularly partial to sugar beet.
Mink arecurrently a bit of a pest on the broads but pleased to say the otter has made a tremendous come back and I now regularly spot them.
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>> being particularly partial to sugar beet.
>>
>
That would explain their occurrence in the Fens in the 1960s. Sugar beet was still collected from the farms by commercial barge then.
One ate our new mooring ropes one night and we woke up drifting down the river Brandon. It was apparently attracted to the oil in the rope.
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Mink are a real pest if you are a water vole, a partridge, a pheasant or a moorhen. No conflict with otters though; it was a combination of pesticides and a policy of clearing reeds from riverbanks that did away with them.
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I didn't intend to imply that mink were a threat to otters or responsible for their decline. In fact in Norfolk both species ar doing well, in the case of the mink perhaps too well.
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>>the man in the diy shop looked at me in a disturbing manner
I should imagine you have the same effect on wimin too.
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I get a lorra rats and mice up here on the moor. I put poison down for their breakfast and evening meal, but they end up dying somewhere that I know not, so have to put up with nasty niffs for far too long = not nice :(
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>> Algiers has the biggest rats I've ever seen. They used to come out of the
>> sewers at night. I pointed some out to a bloke once. The bloke, a member
>> of the Securite Militaire (never mind the accents), insisted that they were cats. Really made
>> me laugh.
>>
The result of a secret CIA experiment targetted at the French. It worked : the French left. The rats remain...
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>> The result of a secret CIA experiment targetted at the French. It worked : the
>> French left. The rats remain...
>>
Racist ! LOL.
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Damn great rats - CGNorwich
