Dead rat stories anyone? Starter for 10..

In the last week or so- I have found- on 2 seperate occasions- a dead rat floating in the mares water bucket.:eek:

I can only assume that even the rats are fed up of the weather and are commiting suicide by drowning themselves.

I once found a squashed hedgehog neatly sandwiched into a bale of hay.......
 
Fluffing up some straw banks with a pitch fork - as you do, and prick.. 1 stabbed rat. I was very pleased with my aim!! lol
Then last year, while putting the aubiose bed down for the hunters, new bale and as I open it a nest of baby rats fell out and scatter all over the stable. Mum rat runs off, and I amazingly catch 5 babies. Normally I would drown them, but seeing as they were only babies, i let them out onto the muck heap, either to live or die in the cold or get 'got' by the yard cat. Who knows what happened to them!
 
I was rummaging in the junk in the back of our carport looking for something, and a large, very fat rat scuttled out suddenly, making me jump, and I knocked over some metal angle iron that was stood beside me, which fell on top of the rat, neatly decapitating it. (Legs still ran on for a bit).

Thought I'd clear it up in the morning, but the cat beat me to it.

Said cat doesn't belong to us, it lives on the estate up the road but prefers the country life. In our hay barn, we keep a high sided trailer which OH fills with logs when he has a session on his saw bench. I can't quite see over the side, but can reach in and throw logs down to wheelbarrow. Cat likes to curl up on top of the hay for a tummy-full snooze, having left her half-eaten array of recent catches in the trailer, for unsuspecting hands to grap...don't think you want to know the details (varied diet of pigeon, rabbit, rat, mouse, shrew, magpie, and unidentified meat) suffice to say I always wear gloves now!
 
We had a bottle of squeezy treacle to put on the bit of a mare that was difficult to bridle, kept in the grooming box which got left on the stable floor one night (in the summer, the horses were out). Next morning it contained one mouse completely submerged and another stuck halfway out of the bottle. My mate was horrified and wanted to give it CPR LOL! I was just amazed they had got the screw cap off.

We had a clear out of the shed when OH bought current house - it was bogging. He was on the way to the tip with the back of the Shogun full, looked in the rear view mirror and saw a rat perched on the pile of rubbish staring back at him! When he unloaded, he found 3 babies too!.
 
I was at work once, and opened the stable where we kept the hay, to find a BIG rat sat on the floor!! It sat there the whole time I was in there it never moved!! Bosses JRT then came walking round the corner and the rat tried to take it on, it ran at the dog mouth open and teeth out..... that was the last thing it ever did.

I've also set the same dog on a rat the cat had got, it was slowly killing it. Getting it giving the rat a bit of a bite then letting it limp off, I couldn't watch it so set the dog on it for a fast death.
 
OH decided to catch whatever was munching our tackroom cupboard by putting down that really sticky paper. Next morning there was a large mouse stuck to it. I was about to end it with a shovel and he said he would do it- MAN work apparently :rolleyes: so he took the paper with mouse still attached out side and swung it hard at the nearest fencepost, swinging back for a second go, the mouse came free, hit him in the chest so he screamed and ran off in the opposite direction to the now freed mouse which scuttled off before i could get it :D

We also had a rat which chewed a hole in the back of the feedroom wall. One day OH went in and found it chomping through a bag of mix that hadnt fitted in the metal bins. Rat legged it with OH armed with shovel in hot pursuit. Rat flung itself back through its hole but was so stuffed it got stuck :eek: OH managed to stop laughing long enough at its legs frantically wiggling to dispatch it..

This summer i was scared by something rustling in the hay shed but closer inspection revealed it to be a mole :confused: so i left it alone :cool:
 
Had countless dead rats in waterbuckets :eek:

But the worst was when I accidently left the lid off the feed bin and the next day I find about 15 mice jumping up the sides of the feedbin trying to get out but they couldn't!! I don't think I screamed more in my life!!

On a nicer note at my old yard we rescued about 5 orphaned baby rabbits! The cutest little things ever and only one died we managed to save the rest. The fact that they were most likely eaten by a fox/ hit by a car/ shot did not cross my mind when I was 10 :D
 
I found a big one last week just dead lying in the field. I guess the cold got to it...

Have found a nest of hours old mice (all pink and eyes closed) in some hay I was unstacking. I felt terrible for a while until I realised that within 3 weeks they probably would have eaten through rugs, boots etc as well as ruining the hay.
 
moosea said:
Mouse stories??

Used to groom a TB mare that would catch 3 -4 mice per night.

You'd go in in the morning and find them in her feed manger.

They'd be perfect except for being very soggy - she use to lick them to death! :confused:
Click to expand...

Feed experts, what was this mare missing in her diet?? :p

Here's a mouse in my mum's birdfood bin, halfway through a trail of destruction. Sadly it later drowned when said bin's lid was left ajar and flooded in a storm...

MouseinHeaven.jpg
 
It was my first night in new house. In my haste to get to bed I left one of the downstair windows slightly open.Next morning I came down,a bit bleary eyed and trod of a dog toy. Looked down and realised it was a large dead rat. My cat had caught six of varying ages, plus four mice and lined them up across the sitting room.I guess she thought they would be a good housewarming pressie!
 
My friend informed me that a rat had managed to die in her stable - stuck in the holes of the breeze blocks and they couldn't get it out. Apparently it didn't smell too great :o Was very glad it wasn't my stable!
We have one cat who used to love killing rats.... and squirrels o.o
 
At a RS I used to work at, the YO once spotted a rat running across towards the muck heap. I've never seen anything like it - he ran at it (he's in his 60's), jumped on it and squished it clean in half with his boot! Yuck...

Also, we used to keep chickens and one morning they were pecking around in one of the stables. Suddenly one of them spotted a mouse....it stamped on the mouses tail to keep it still, pecked it a few times, then swallowed it whole - and live! I was amazed it fit down it's throat apart from anything else! :D
 
My mare is a bit messy when she eats and drops feed out of her mouth. A rat stupidly came and ate up the crumbs - it wouldn't have been a problem apart from the fact her feed is well laced with potassium bromide as an anticonvulsant and said rat fell asleep after breakfast and never woke up (yayyy - one less!). Unfortunately the murdering chestnut beast also saw off a blackbird last year which I found snoring peacefully in the feedbucket which I hadn't had time to put in a feed bin, and just left it in the stable with the door shut, and two crows had a narrow escape this summer when they also snacked on the crumbs. Whoops.
 
When we lived in Scotland our house was next to (up and embankment) a motorway, on the other side of that was open countryside, and somewhere in the general area there was a chicken farm, we'd a cat who found his way to that farm and used to bring back rats - one of them wasn't dead, he dropped it in our drive and it sat there looking very very p!ssed off until my brother threw a brick at it and killed it.
 
I always remember at one yard I was moving some bins around and this massive rat suddenly shot out. My old dog (who normally wouldn't do anything but think she was inspired by the JRT`s down there :D) gave chase and was really going for it. All of a sudden the rat stopped dead and turned around, Daisy stopped and just stared at it, having no idea what to do now it had stopped. The rat then turned round and sauntered off into its hole, leaving her standing there, the expression on her face was priceless :D Bless her she was a Bichion frise and certainly wasn't the brightest dog in the world :)

At the yard I used to work at I opened a bag of shavings to find two perfectly flat mice in there, have also found a squashed rat in friends stable :)
 
Ok so not rodent related, but when I was a kid we used to keep my ponies on the farm next to our old house, and my mum looked after the farmers hunters in return. He had a free range chicken operation on the farm (big straw bale barns in the fields which the chickens freeranged over), and they started finding dead chickens everywhere in the field minus their heads. After staking out one night to try and catch the suspected fox in the act, they found that actually it was one of the hunters picking the birds up by their heads and with one sudden jerk of his head, sending the body flying through the air detached from its head......nice gelding that was!!!
 
I picked up some loose hay from the floor, (as you do when its so expensive!) and there was a live wriggerly rat in the middle! Dropped that pretty quick to be fair....
 
As I put my muck boots on recently, I could feel something inside. I couldn't quite remember whether I had left the previous days socks in my boots but on closer inspection I could see a LARGE tail !! UUeekk I remembered the cat had been 'playing' with my boots the previous evening and I suspect she had chased or dropped a dead rat down the boot.

Do you know I had to pat and shake out the boot for quite some time to get the booger out !!!!


Uck !!
 
Another here who has found countless dead rats in waterbuckets.

When I lived at home you never, ever, walked around the house in the dark as my mum's small cat used to bring all manner of small animals home and would leave insides, eye balls and ears in a nice little pile wherever he fancied. One morning I was woken to my mum shouting for my brother and my brother killing himself laughing as her cat had bought in a huge rat but couldn't quite get it through the cat flap so left it half in and half out and half eaten... yuk....
 
Quite a few years ago my husband screamed to me from the kitchen "THE CAT'S BROUGHT SOMETHING IN!!!!"....I ran in to see a rat racing about the floor followed closely by the cat. OH said "I'll look after the baby" and left the room at speed.

I caught the cat, chucked it into the next room after OH and small child, and watched in interest as the rat ran up the curtains, along the curtain rail, and down the other side, at which point I threw a teatowel over it and bundled it out of the catflap.

That husband is now an ex.
 
No rat stories, but a few mouse ones... and a humane (without traps etc solution! :D)

1. When I was a kid we lived abroad for a few years. I used to ride at the army stables. The head instructor decided it was time for a clear out in the tack room. On the one side there were cupboards and above them a shelf with numnahs etc. Because I was the lightest they sent me up to pull all the numnahs down. I duely grabbed a handful and yanked... Below me was the instructor and the lady who used to clean the offices etc... The tack room had double doors but only 1 was open this day. I am not sure who screamed the loudest, all I saw was these two doing what I can only describe as a Laurel and Hardy trying to get out the door at the same time. :D :D When I jumped down and looked at the pile of numnahs there was a mommy mouse (stunned, I think :D and tiny baby meece, still bald.

2. When I first got my horse I had the grand total of nothing. I had left a bag of feed that I was going to put into a dustbin. As I tipped the feed out a mouse jumped and just about bit my nose. When I recovered I realised that the kids were in piles round the feed room, crying with laughter! :D :D

3. Blinkin meece in the house!!! Last winter we really suffered with the monsters in the kitchen. The house is rented and a dormer bungalow. Maaaan they were even in the walls!!! :( We tried EVERYTHING!!! Powder, sonic etc. I wont touch poison cos I have seen what it does and wont be responsible for that. :( We also have cats around etc etc. Kitten managed to find one under the kitchen cupboards as we had left the boards out.

Anyway, this year I have discovered these electro-magnetic plug ins that work thru the wiring in your house. They emit a frequency that meece and rats hate. It doesn't affect any other animals other than rodents. Whoop Whoop! :D Aaaaand the best bit... because the power for the stables comes from the house I think it is covering the stables. I have had them plugged in for a few weeks, not heard / seen anything and not had any "holes" in the horses beds. If I do discover any I'll just get one for the yard. They are cheap enough to buy and cheap enough to run. Aaaaaand breathe! I might have a quiet Christmas without the pesky critters. :)
 
I am at war with a big fat rat at the moment. There are almost 20 semi feral cats at the yard that are great ratters....but they are afraid of this fella. He took half the (spayed) Tom-Cat's ear off two weeks ago when tomtom tried to take him on. Rat did this bold as brass in the middle of yard while we were untacking after first lot!! I have had near misses every day with the shovel but haven't successfully got him and the cheeky git has now moved from an empty stable into the hay. Hadn't seen him for two days and thought the cold must have finally got him but no he was bold as brass snuggled up in the hay today. I have a major rat hunting plan for tomorrow...I will take great satisfaction in killing the horrible thing. Boots my very soft dog has suddenly in the last 4 days at the age of 5 decided that he wants to be a ratter and has been making nifty work of the smaller ones so if i can stun the big fella Boots can finish him off.
 
Had one jump out a haybale and land on my shoulder a couple of years ago and then launch itself into orbit while I stood frozen in fear with a half-hearted farty kind of scream exiting my mouth.

I am terrified of them, I prefer them flat packed in the stable to alive ever since I was walking up a small lane and had one the size of a small cat come out of a ditch and deposit itself a few feet in front of me and it held it's ground as if to say 'What are you going to do about it?' I moved a footstep closer and it stayed stock still staring at me, I retreated, rat won. (Seen too many horror movies probably, me not the rat).
 
I was at the yard bright and early one morning and heard a SCREAM from the feed room - a teenager had uncovered her bucket of Copra which had been soaking all night and found three baby rats swimming around in it, trampling on each other to keep their heads above water. Neither of us had the heart to kill them ourselves, even though letting them drown slowly was probably crueller, but they were all dead by that evening. Poor little sods, I know they have to be got rid of but I used to have pet rats which I adored so I don't think I could ever hurt one.

I love our feedroom mice too - again, I know they're vermin and bad for the horses, but when I put my feed scoop into a bin of pony nuts and it comes out with a fluffy little mouse sitting on it, it does make me go "aaaww". Maybe I'm a bit weird.... definitely too soft to be a proper country girl!
 
We have our pet rabbits in a lovely big leanto shed behind the stables and their food had been disappearing a bit faster than usual. Anyway I went in one morning to feed them and there was a dead rat wedged halfway through a gap in the stone wall at the back :eek: Clearly it had been enjoying too much rabbit food for its own good :D Took us ages to pull it out though!
 
alsxx said:
Ok so not rodent related, but when I was a kid we used to keep my ponies on the farm next to our old house, and my mum looked after the farmers hunters in return. He had a free range chicken operation on the farm (big straw bale barns in the fields which the chickens freeranged over), and they started finding dead chickens everywhere in the field minus their heads. After staking out one night to try and catch the suspected fox in the act, they found that actually it was one of the hunters picking the birds up by their heads and with one sudden jerk of his head, sending the body flying through the air detached from its head......nice gelding that was!!!
Click to expand...

:eek:

TheHorse.com had a feature or two on psycho horses and people wrote in with stories like that. They say Danzig used to kill birds in his field, and there were quite a few who were killing to eat :confused: I just tried to Google for it but couldn't find it. I'll post it if it shows up. Edited to add: here it is http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=4327

That gelding who waited by the rat hole and stomped on them might be more useful...
 
Brought the horse in out the field into the stable...all of a sudden I hear a giant *squeel*. He trod on a bloody rat *shudder*...

Only thing was it wasn't dead just very, well broken D:
Had to finish it off myself :/ Uhhhh. It was huge aswell!!
 
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