Hi guys,
I was cleaning the backyard of my new house today, and found two of these little buggers hanging around behind the garden shed.
Is it a Mouse? Rat? Something else?
Can You Please Help Me Identify This Creature?
Lnaviln on 15/11/2020 - 22:30
Poll Options
- 13Mouse
- 369Rat
- 8Some other creature
- 34Burn the shed down
- 61Cut your losses and sell the house immediately
Comments
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I had a similar thought til I saw dem beady ass eyes!
I was hoping it was some native mammal…(wishful thinking i guess?)
Ngaww he so cute meditating and shit.
There are plenty of native rodents/rats. Might be worth checking with a local authority before you kill it.
There are loads of native rats mate. Which are a native mammal. Nothing wrong with them!
Fair point. As long as they don't get into my house/walls and chew or destroy things, i guess i could leave them be.
Why no titmouse in the poll?
flying tittiy mouse?
That’s a rat. Seen plenty of them in our garden. They were a pain in the ass to get rid of and kept eating our strawberries and other produce. We suspect they came from our neighbours very overgrown yard which made managing them hard.
Get cats!
Cats are worse than rats.
get a snake takes care of rats and cats
@iand: No, the story goes cat, dog, cow, horse. Though I think they misidentified the last 2 because what kind of cow or horse from a pet cemetery eats other animals?
Ah that sucks. I'm planning to do a vegetable garden eventually, and i don't want any trouble from these pesky things!
I'm planning to do a vegetable garden… and i don't want any trouble
Rats and mice are predominantly foragers. They are not big plant eaters and prefer things like seeds/nuts, some small fruits and small insects. They are not going to bust into your garden at night and eat all your cucumbers. If you leave the seeds laying around, they will eat those. Just make sure you clean up as you go and don't leave anything around that they might like to eat.
And another thing, if there is 2, there is 15 of them. A pair like this skulking around could mean that babies are either on the way or are not far away…
Except for when they do. There's been reports of them becoming much more bold after all the restaurants shut down for COVID and their usual feeding grounds (dumpsters etc) were constrained.
We had a particularly greedy rat set up shop and it was stripping absolutely everything. I set up the night vision camera and caught it red-handed. A weak trap got it a couple of times but they'd escape, you could see the drag marks. A bait took care of it and things are only now recovering.
@Zachary: Only poor quality night vision footage from a Xiaofang camera.
It's eaten the snowpeas down to the ground, the silverbeet down to the ground and most of the carrot top leaves (the stem must be too bitter). In another box it ate all the leaves off two rhubarb plants almost killing then. It also had a go at ringbarking the plum tree but I'm not 100% sure that was the rat?
If this is your worry rats far from the top of your list, POSSUMS are.
I tried to be a hero once and remove a huge rat for my SO that was hanging around the garden. I shooed it away and it ran out to the street, but it accidentally bashed into my ankle sideways on the way out. It had such heft and I can still clearly remember the warmth of the rat against my body even all these years later. Take my story was a warning to leave rats to the experts, unless you want the memory of a huge black rat rushing you haunting your dreams.
There's nothing like the nice warm fuzzy feeling you get from animals.
It was frightening. The rat must have scared someone else as it ran out. My SO told me they heard a woman scream, which I could not otherwise account for.
@PleasureMe: Significant other. I just don't want to say "wife" to alienate the husbands and gays, or "husband" to confuse all the men reading this. I think i used "spouse" earlier too. I'm nothing if not inconsistent.
@AustriaBargain: Thanks for the explanation. But I think we live in a very sad world if you’re too scared to call your wife your wife for fear of alienating people.
@AustriaBargain: Oooooooohhhhhhhhhh, you're gay and married to guy…..that took me a while to figure out..hah….but yeah, it wouldnt be alienating unless everyone here knew your gender and interest in same gender too…but I guess they now know you're a male and have a preference towards same gender as yourself…
I can still clearly remember the warmth of the rat against my body even all these years later.
How many shades of grey did the rat have?
Could you provide an MS paint diagram?
We notice a rat or two in our house, it was making new holes all around this was a big issue. I bought some rat food cubes from bunnings, never heard from another one again after one block completely disappeared.
LOL…getting rat rushed wouldn't haunt me in my slumber, but spiders on the other hand definetely do give me the heeby jeebies…shudder
Doesn't matter. Find a cat and bob's your uncle
I've also got a lovely blue tongue lizard, and i don't want him to become cat food though!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj7x7lz85mblhrw/IMG_7748.JPEG?dl=0
also, i hate cats
Be careful with using rat poison if you have a blue tongue “Blue-tongue lizards, for example, often consume rat bait and die of internal bleeding“ https://www.wires.org.au/wildlife-info/wildlife-factsheets/w…
Thank you, ill keep that in mind. Definetely dont want to hurt the skinks
whatever keyboard you're typing that on, you need a better one
Does he help around the house?
He seems to live under my pergola, and is taking care of the snail/slugs (which is sort of around the house?)
Find a cat and bob's your uncle
Get a Bob Cat.
This reply is undervalued IMO - have a +vote
Find an uncle with a bob cat
But can Bob fix it?
Depends on what the unions say
Of course. He's a builder.
Pretty sure I've got one of these living over the fence in the neighbour's bamboo….See it run along the fence top every now and then, makes my dogs go berserk.
Thought it was a rat but didn't quite look rightBamboo fencing in front of the fence ? I'd talk to the neighbour about it. I ended up having a colony living in between my bamboo and fence. I'm still haunted by it.
Nah like a little bamboo plantation on their side of the fence. I don't know how it hasn't taken off after all this time, I thought the stuff grew like a weed? They're elderly so don't really tend to the garden quite so much these days either. I'd imagine there's definitely more than one in there but have only ever seen one at a time when I go out there at night looking for them
Thanks! I guess after reading that i have to conclude that its a rat?
Yours is going thru a midlife crisis.
Yes Mines is going through a midlife crisis. Very much Appreciate. Such Fact. Much Wow.
That right there is Rattus Fuscipes — The common bush rat.
If you want to get rid of it, whip up a tasty trail mix full of seasonal seeds, dried fruit and your favourite brodifacoum-infused anticoagulant morsels and leave it out somewhere quiet: Preferably where birds can't find it.
Thanks for the advice :)
That's what I thought, its ears looked too big to be a black rat.
I would disagree, the tail is too thick and too long to be a bush rat (you can see it at roughly 1:40). Also the bush rat's head is normally fairly contiguous with its body, whereas this rat has a fairly well defined torso and head. Its actually hard to distinguish the two based on the ears, given the morphological differences in ear size within the two species.
Bush rats are also generally more skittish than this, and generally don't frequent areas with heavy human traffic.
Is it even legal to kill an Australian Native species?
Nope, all protected, with heavy penalties.
What about death from fisticuffs??
What about self defence from swooping magpies?
Is not rat. Is hamster.
Filigree hamster.
Feral hamster.
It's definitely a Siberian hampster.
Is not rat. Is hamster.
i think some people on this forum didnt get that… You snobs. You stupid stuck-up, toffee-nosed, half-witted, upper-class piles of pus
what his grammatically incorrect sentencing?
space* hamster
These can only be eradicated with a 44 Auto Mag
Should i get a silencer with that too?
It's definitely a Nabarlek…
It's defo a Tasmanian Tiger
In some countries that's a delicacy
Lol please let’s not encourage covid-21…
you mean Bubonic-21
it is a dropbear
not the two headed variety as seen in our front yard yesterday
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0dlhu8ouk77dqcd/drop%20bear.JPG?dl…
.If you chop one head off, does it grow back twice?
Heil Dropbear
A bit hard to tell, but the tail looks long so probably a black rat
https://australian.museum/learn/species-identification/ask-a…
https://allpropestcontrol.com.au/whats-the-difference-betwee…
If you end up laying poison be wary to control for risks to your or any neighbours dogs, native animals and birds. If a dog ends up eating the poison or a carcass it can be very sick or die. Our neighbours let us know when they are putting out poison so we can lookout for carcasses before our dog gets to them. You could also consider a trap
https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-is-the-most-huma…Thanks
Looks like a bushie.
Get an elliott trap to catch it alive, bait it with a mix of dry oats and peanut butter (rolled into balls for easy handling)
It's almost irresistible to them.
Bush rat is the first Google result for "native australian rat" and it kinda looks like your rat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_rat
Federal politician on the hustings?
watch out the rat society will be calling you about impunung their character there
You are correct and I unreservedly apologise to all the rats out there that I might have offended with my comments.
Rattus Politico
It would be a roof rat. Looks like a juvenile. Just grab a rat box from Bunnings and jam it in that gap. Keep it off the ground so the blue tongue can’t get to the bait.
https://www.bunnings.com.au/ratsak-fast-action-reusable-rode…Can they die in the roof after eating the wax?
what if they die in the roof after eating the wax? any idea how to remove them ?
Good idea thanks
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Possum?