Dead rat stories anyone? Starter for 10..

Fee Fo

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I worked on a hunt yard in North Yorkshire for a year. While I was there my friend who also worked with me appeared out of a stable in fits of giggles. The big 17hh2 hunter she was mucking out had had a very productive night. On the end of her muck fork she produced a perfectly formed but wafer thin, flat rat! HA HA!! Can't think of a more deserving creature! Charming end: Brogden's big a£$e coming baring down at you, just when you thought you'd made a nice warm nest for the night!
 
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:

Also had a friend who couldn't get her long riding boot on. She tried to stamp her foot several times before emptying her boot to find a dead mouse in the bottom! Made us all check our boots before we put them on!
 
Poor ratty! Fancy being flattened!

The only dead rat stories I have of the ones from chasing the YO with dead rats as he is absolutley terrified of them. Hes that scared he once made me get off the horse while he was giving me a lesson to remove it from the arena.

However I know one funny story of one of the liveries cornering the YO while swinging a rat by the tail until the rat snapped off the tail.
Shame I wasn't there to see it!
 
What a way to go! Clever horse.

My cat brought me a very large rat early one morning. I lived in a caravan at the riding school and being summer I had the door open. In comes cat head held very high and mewling like only a cat does when it's pleased with itself, carrying an enormous rat. She had it held by the scruff of its neck, with part of it under her and between her front paws. She carefully drags it over to me who is comfortably having a lie in. Cat jumps onto the bed and proudly deposits said rat at my feet.
"Here mum - breakfast in bed - want some - I'll share" Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poppy.jpg
 
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Not a dead Rat but was mucking out a straw box once, dug into the corner of a bank and pulled out a dead pheasant!
Screamed to high heaven!!

Clearly one of the JRTs had caught it and buried it to make it yummy :rolleyes:
 
Not a dead Rat but was mucking out a straw box once, dug into the corner of a bank and pulled out a dead pheasant!
Screamed to high heaven!!

Clearly one of the JRTs had caught it and buried it to make it yummy :rolleyes:

Or ot got caught in a combine. EURGH! Another sticky demise for wildlife!
 
What a way to go! Clever horse.

My cat brought me a very large rat early one morning. I lived in a caravan at the riding school and being summer I had the door open. In comes cat head held very high and mewling like only a cat does when it's pleased with itself, carrying an enormous rat. She had it held by the scruff of its neck, with part of it under her and between her front paws. She carefully drags it over to me who is comfortably having a lie in. Cat jumps onto the bed and proudly deposits said rat at my feet.
"Here mum - breakfast in bed - want some - I'll share" Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poppy.jpg

Milk and Sugar with that???
 
I was changing the boy's water and was horrified that I couldn't see the bottom of the trug: I emptied it out and there was a very drowned rat in there which had obviously clouded the water. Yuk! It must have fallen in from the shelf that runs round the stable.

I was doing haynets one day and came across a very flat, very dessicated rat-foul, I had no idea what it was when I grabbed it!:eek:

Horrifically, a friend contracted Weils's disease when her horse bit her and she forgot to wear gloves to do the hay. It took the doctor ages to work out what it was and it wasn't until she said she had horses and is frequently at the yard that he clicked on. She's very lucky that she didn't die: she has lost some feeling in one hand but nothing more, thank God.
 
I was changing the boy's water and was horrified that I couldn't see the bottom of the trug: I emptied it out and there was a very drowned rat in there which had obviously clouded the water. Yuk! It must have fallen in from the shelf that runs round the stable.

I was doing haynets one day and came across a very flat, very dessicated rat-foul, I had no idea what it was when I grabbed it!:eek:

Horrifically, a friend contracted Weils's disease when her horse bit her and she forgot to wear gloves to do the hay. It took the doctor ages to work out what it was and it wasn't until she said she had horses and is frequently at the yard that he clicked on. She's very lucky that she didn't die: she has lost some feeling in one hand but nothing more, thank God.

OUCH! Thank the good Lord she is OK.
 
Many years ago I kept my horses at a friends house and we had a terrible rat problem in the feed room which was between the 2 stables as there was a ditch running at the back. We put down poison and they vanished rapidly. the following spring we dragged out the old chest freezer that we kept feed in and under the pallet that it sat on was a dessicated rat, totally dried out, it must have died under there from the poison. Having removed the crispy critter the rats returned with vengance!
 
spring cleaning bedroom and rather dead decayed flat packed rat, cat must of brought it in as a present half alive and the bugger must of ran under the bed and died.
Shows how often i clean under my bed, but the bed is like millimeters off the floor
 
Does it have to be at the barn?

I had my oil changed in my SUV and the technician said that there was something stuck underneath my skidplate at the front of my truck. When I got home I looked and it was a rat's tail, just hanging down. I went inside and got my leather gloves, put them on and tried to grab the tail to pull the body out. When I started to pull the body stayed put but all the skin came off the tail, leaving the bone hanging there :eek:. I screamed and ran!

Luckily my male neighbour heard me and came over and saved me. After a lot of trying, we managed to get the body of a petrified rat out through my wheel well. I had wondered what the awful smell was coming from my truck a few months earlier. Yuck!
 
Poor ratties!!!

Usually we put poison down for them but we also have a lot of weasels, hedgehogs etc that are also eating it... so instead we use enormous rat traps. We catch them in the feed rooms

We have also had a variety of mice, voles and baby rats caught in set traps permanently out in our house. (We're not peasants, just VERY rural!!) I put down humane traps as I like to set them free across the fields but they always seem more attracted to the nasty traps :confused:
 
Erm, several rat stories..
At the old dairy farm where I used to milk cows, one of the old buildings(now a posh barn conversion) was used as a granary; if you opened the door a bit sharpish at ceratin times of the day, a rat would plop onto your head...that was a live one though.
Talking of Rat crisps...One of the bad things about cleaning out the old corn drier at the end of the year when the corn had gone, was digging out spilt wheat/barley etc from the conveyor pit where you worked in a sort of 3' by3' space and very poor lighting.
Where the inevitable rats had fallen and not been able to escape, btu you didnt know what was bloking the conveyor until you got your hands on it
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Our 1st horse (a cob gelding) managed to flatten a couple of rats every winter. I think it was the only time he ever moved quickly, lol.
Our neighbour told us a tale of finding a rat when we had a huge shared problem, as a nearby farm was being refurbished. She had seen a strand of wire poking out of her grooming box, wondered why it was in there and pulled it out. She found a dead rat at the end of the 'piece of wire'. Fortunately she had her gloves on when she picked it up by its tail.
We had a tiny but malevolent female tortoiseshell cat. One night the cat accompanied my sis to get the last hay of the night from the hay-store. Sister happened to stun a rat with the door as she opened it, the cat caught it and quickly dispatched it. She expected sister to repeat the trick every night afterwards for quite some time.
 
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Standing in the yard nattering to a friend, and holding an electric fence post, when a rat ran over my foot.

Now, apparently I'm a ninja,


'cause I stabbed the little bugger and got a rat kebab.
 
I had 2 pet rats when I was a teenager. My parents wouldn't let me keep them in the house though cause they were a bit smelly (males) so their cage was in the toolshed. One night they got out but luckily I caught them the following morning and all was back to normal. But... later that year I was doing my pony's waters and fished out a drowned black and white rat. The randy little beggers had obviously had their wicked way with the wild rats! We kept seeing multicoloured rats for another year or so until they seemed to die out.
 
If you live in a stable ,in a mobile home, it is costant rat warfare. But you also learn to respect the enemy. Some problems are easily sorted ,like the rat that used to jump through the cat flap.I used to think it was just the wind making it bang till I saw him one night. He had to take a right flyer of a run and jump at it too. I still grin at the thought of the "thump " "Squeek" after I locked it.:D:D:D
 
In total I've found 7/8 dead rats in Red's water bucket- only baby ones but still! I screamed and ran round in circles when 3 slid out as I emptied his water bucket *shudders* Haven't had any since he's moved stables ;)
We also had a horse at the yard squish one flat :D
 
There was a horse at our former yard that used to wait by their hole and stomp on them, flattening them.

We have more mice this year than any time before in the tack room, they ate one of my wellies and a numnah. We have 4 farm cats and endless dogs and still have the bl**dy things. Yuek
FDC
 
- will live rat stories do instead ......put my hand in a a feedbin on a dark winters night & found not a feed scoop - but a VERY live rat - it seems that i didnt just jump but actually levitated across the yard - soem yrs ago at another yard - very posh & demure Pony club mummy was in feed room when a whooper of a rat ran over her feet - we were amazed by the breadth & variety of her language:D:D:D
 
ONe riding school I worked at used an out nissan hut for the tack & feed room. There were old doors propped up on their sides to line the walls of the feed room. Every now and then we would have a massive clean out, All the bins would go out of the room and one at a time the wall boards would follow. When there was only one board left the Jack Russels were brought in, the door closed and the last board moved from the wall.

Pandemonium would break out as hysterical jack russels snapped and grabbed at the mice who now had nowhere to hide. Within ten mins the place would be littered with mouse bodies and two exhausted Jack Russels.
 
I was having a quiet sit with the stable cat on my knee (her ambition was to be a house cat and have lots of fuss) and a large rat crept out from a corner. The cat stood up, looked at the rat and sat down again, as if to say "If you expect me to tackle that, you have another think coming .................."

A full grown rat looks as big as a cat when you see their long fat tail disappear into a corner. We had a terrible problem with rats last year, used traps and poison, but seem to have succeed in getting rid of most of them. When I went towards the feed room I used to hear a thump and a scuffle as they were getting out of my way. The feed is kept in metal bins, but I suppose they are always on the lookout for leavings.

Last year there was one that used to come out in broad daylight and eat food on the yard. Even if it ran away it would come back again soon if I stodd and waited. OH bought a new air rifle with good sights for that situation.
 
Years ago I went to buy some guinea fowl and the old farmyards was very higgledy piggledy. The birds were in an old hayloft so went up to grab them leaving my 16yo brother who had hos leg in a cast at the bottom of the stairs/ladder thingy.

As we put the light on the rats, en masse, scrambled down the stairwell with a plaintive voice from below -"someones throwing rats at me"

They had leapt onto him on the way down...



Hate the creatures and rarely get problems but when next door,100 yards away, was being rebuilt their's moved over and my old cat would line them up on the doorstep -along with bunny ears.
 
Some great ones on here.
Umm, I have a few.
Was mucking out a disgusting all-winter-deep-litter stable (solidified muck about 4' deep) for the YO when I was a kid of about 12, my friend picked up a dessicated squashed-flat rat and said "wow, look at the size of this mouse" (it was about a foot long...), when I said "that's a rat!" she dropped it and ran out of the stable screaming.
at overnight stabling in a v posh yard, the groom took my mare's feed and emptied it into the corner manger (which really annoyed me anyway, i use my own feed buckets etc, don't want my horses eating out of other containers, ugh), mare went to take a few mouthfulls and then leapt back, snorting and really upset. when i investigated, the *****y groom had dumped my feed on top of loads of stale feed that the previous horse had left in there, and a DEAD RAT, which my mare's nose had just touched.
neither the mare nor I were amused... ugh.
I managed to kill a rat with a yardbroom after it bit 1 of my russells, i chased it down the yard, barefoot in my dressing gown (don't ask) swinging the broom over my head, and managed to smack it across the back, it was like a scene out of Tom and Jerry.
actually, haven't seen a rat for a while...
 
When we lived in London the rats were enormous and plentiful. Our two cats used to line up the corpses on the steps up to the front door of the flat in various poses - "sleeping-on-side-peacefully", "on-back-with-paws-curled-up", "shocked-and-looking-like-I've-died-a-really-violent-death". Sometimes they would only half kill in and I'd have to dispatch it myself with a plank of wood. Nice.
 
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