Snakes on St. Thomas - need help!

Snakes are nothin'. Tree Rats are a bigger nuisance.

We had a couple of small mice get in the condo, and no big deal. A couple of traps with a little peanut butter, and in no time...SNAP! They're gone.

In less than a week, we had another visitor. I thought it was another mouse, but when it stuck it's jead out of the pantry and ran a few feet into to living area, I knew then it was too big for that... it was over 12 inches long! It saw me and my wife and ran back in the pantry. I closed the door just enough to leave it only one way out. I laid out both mouse traps at the opening, and called a friend who is an exterminator. I explained what I did, and he said "I wouldn't lay those tiny mouse traps out, it'll just piss him off. They normally run away from you unless they feel trapped. then they might jump and bite". No sooner than he said that, then SNAP!... there went a trap! Sure enough, the rat just shook it off, and came running right at us!! Oh No... a pissed rat coming right after our bear feet. I'm still on the phone yelling at it, and my wife is on top of the back of the sofa, trying to climb up on the curtain rods! The rat is still heading right for us. I'm yelling and laughing, my wife is screaming, and the rat is charging. I grab a sneaker and smashed it's head...again, and again, and again! Rat blood all over the floor but I got it! My friend heard the whole thing on the phone, and was ROFLOL after that.

Sure enough, it was a brown tree rat. They are very common here. It turns out the former owner removed the rubber seal on the threshold of the front door so it would close after the door warped a little. It left an opening the size of my little finger under the bottom. We had never noticed, but it was plenty big enough for mice and rats. I learned a full size rat can get through a crack less than the width of a pencil at a full run and not even slow down. It only needs a hole the size of a dime to get into YOUR house.

Don't worry about snakes, there are mcuh more common house guests that will visit you. LOL

Anyone else have their own "rat tale"?

~laughing 'til it hurts~

"I wouldn't lay those tiny mouse traps out, it'll just piss him off. "

Too darn funny! With that ability to get in through the tiniest opening, the island rats sound like they're related to ferrets somewhere back in their family tree. Having learned from experience how to ferret-proof a home, I guess I also learned a valuable VI skill in how to keep another unwelcome critter out.

You sure paint a vivid picture, Island Ed. Thanks for the laugh, and for making me pretty darn happy we decided that the thick foam weather stripping we bought for our door (mostly to keep water after heavy rain and millipedes out) wasn't overkill.

--HC

Oh, and please tell your wife that were a pissed off, foot long rat charging at me, I'd be right there climbing the curtain rods with her, non-working legs and wheelchair be damned!

Two years ago my wife and I were spending the winter in a condo on St Croix. We discovered and could hear a rat visit at night. (Don't leave out any garbage or food) This rat even hauled off empty soft drink cans.

I went down to Gallows Bay Hardware and bought a "rat trap" (the cheapest available) and some rat poison. I set out the trap and the first night the rat and the trap came flying off the kitchen overhang onto the floor in front of my wife. The rat ran away, probably laughing. I then set the trap every night for four nights and it was "picked clean of bait". So we called an exterminator. He laughed when he saw my trap and said I needed the SUPER RAT TRAP. Instead I put out the poison and Mr Rat was gone in two days.

He was a nuasance, not a danger.

Thankfully I have never had to contend with mice or rats in the house. I'm sure I too would resort to poison but I would also worry about the dead, now toxic, rat ending up in my cistern in its quest to quench its poison-induced thirst.

I was told... compared to mice, rats are very smart and cautious. Mice will always get caught in a trap you set as they go right for the bait. To use a trap with rats you need to set the bait out on the unset trap first. Let them take the bait a few times so they get used to it. Then you can set the trap and they will take the bait and get caught. If you set it from the get go, they will play with it and push it around until it springs, THEN they take the bait. Once they know it will spring, they will not take the bait unless it springs first, or they will avoid the trap altogether. Pretty crafty, huh?

Oops, appears we've gonna sideways again, starting with snakes and ending with rats! Lots of creepy-crawlies in between...That the poison causes massive thirst is a common misconception propagated by pest companies - my family owns one, so that's how I found out this isn't necessarily true. The poison doesn't send the rat to look for water - it's a blood thinner and they just bleed out and die wherever they are. Since rats love to be near the water, presto - an urban myth was born! Die behind the cistern in a lower room? Yep. Under the deck? Oh, yeah. Anywhere it is dark, as it's usually a 24 hour bleed out...they are nocturnal and eat it one night and start going to the pearly gates the next night. The biggest thing is if you have pets. Eating the carcass of something that passed before it's time will pass the blood thinners on to your pet and is potentially fatal. Looking at your pet eating a carcass is potentially stomach churning. Seeing a live rat scurry across your yard isn't potentially anything - just time to climb onto the closest high surface you can find! My Rotties caught a couple and it was bad. Fortunately, they put the rats out of their misery in short order. But the rats were huge and they were gross - now they don't want to hang out here because the Fangs of the Rotten Ones are after them...gee, I hate it that they moved on....

I saw what I thought was a snake in the water at Hotel on the Key. It was not really moving. It was black with yellow stripes. It was about as wide as a thumb and about 10 inches long. It did not stick around much longer after that. When I told people what I had seen the response was that was probably an eel. eel/snake what's the difference? They are all creepy to me.

Melody,

Can't answer the question about the difference between sea snakes and eels beyond saying that we have eels here in the Caribbean, but there are no sea snakes anywhere in the Atlantic/Caribbean waters.

What you and the others who reported seeing a black and yellow banded snake-like critter saw was either an eel of some kind or a harlequin pipefish, which is a relative of the sea horse. Here's a pic of the harmless harlequin pipefish, which does look an awful lot like the very poisonous sea snakes that are predominantly found in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

http://reefnet.ca/galleries/2004-07/KW_Fishes/slides/harlequin%20pipefish-02.html

I'm sure hoping your answer is, "Yep, pipefish it is" because the thought of sharing these gorgeous waters with a brightly colored sea horse is a lot more comforting than sharing it with an eel. Even though the eel hardly poses a hazard, they're just a lot creepier to me, too!

--HC