In a message dated 8/28/2006 5:27:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
 writes:

Since  Fran mentioned road construction, my guess it that these are 
displaced  rats from the construction.  Like her, I'm too tenderhearted to 
set a  trap, so when during the days long past when I put out extra food on 
the  ground for the squirrels, and did attract a rat, I caught him in a  
Havahart trap and released him in a park 5 miles  away. 


HI ALL,
 I will add my 2 cents to this thread as well. I too live in a  townhouse 
community and had a rat problem twice over twenty years. 
 
Once, they were feeding on waste seed in my back yard and living under my  
neighbors deck (they can tunnel their burrows up to 3 feet underground!). Once I 
 got rid of the food source, I had to deal with the burrows. I bought 
commercial  rat-killer pack and would leave out a set number of pellets each night, 
counting  them beforehand so as to keep track of their feeding. Solution; move 
the feeders  to the front yard and buy only quality seed that birds eat, not 
grocery store  seed which contains lots of waste seed. This ends up on the 
ground and is  attractive to rodents. Pouring bleach down their holes gets rid of 
the smell  eventually. 
 
The other time, the rats were fewer in number but eating seed out front. I  
bought a Havahart trap (small size with only one entrance) because I didn't 
want  to risk a regular rat trap killing either a bird or one of my many 
squirrels.  Caught in one of these traps, a rat will die pretty quickly from 
starvation. I  have no qualms about killing Norway Rats; they are a pest (as in 
pestilance!),  an invasive alien and a terrific vector of disease.  Letting them go 
in a  park just makes them someone elses problem.
 
Switch to a good bird seed, either hulled sunflower or regular sunflower,  
and/or white millet, or safflower. The birds should do a pretty good job  eating 
it with little waste.
 
Rick Sussman
Ashton,MD