Trapping Rats Using the Scissor Spring Rat Trap

What do you do to unwanted visitors? I mean the rodent types? Killing them is an outright solution unless you are an animal rights activist. Rats will crawl into your house from nowhere unexpectedly; lay still during the day but wreak havoc during the night.

They will take control of your house, start running up and down. They will be singing, dancing and making more babies as you try to summon sleep after a day of hard work. As you head to sleep, they will rush to the kitchen to check what you had prepared for supper.

After taking quick bites of what you left, they will visit you at the bedroom to check your snoring level. They will also check if you need a pedicure (I have heard they can chew your feet or hands when you are in dreamland).

When you are about to catch the much-needed sleep, they will start screaming and hollering like they are drunk. It is the gnawing that will wake you up because you are not sure what is being eaten. You switch on the lights and they duck into safety.

You curse softly and switch off the lights again. You start drifting to sleep and all over a sudden, the madness starts again. You grope for one of your shoes in the darkness and hurl it with all your energy to the corner where the gnawing noise is coming from. Something shatters in the dead of the night and your neighbours’ dog barks. You pull tight your blankets and hate yourself for loathing cats.

There are hundreds of methods you can use to catch the rats and mice once they invade your home. In most cases, if you have a cat, you will not have problems with these rodents. Using poisoned baits will work but the method has some disadvantages.

One, you will find that after taking the poison, the rats prefer dying in hard to find places. If you are not lucky to find the dead rat at once, your house will have a malodorous smell worse than that of a rotting garbage dump site. Sometimes the rats will just take the poisoned bit to be consumed elsewhere; this is not good because it might end up somewhere it is not intended endangering lives in the process.

You can also make use of live capture traps if you dare to come face to face with the captured ungraceful animal.

I like trapping the rats using Scissor Spring Rat Trap because it is cheap, readily available, very efficient and easy to operate. The trap can be bought from supermarkets or hardware shops. The Scissor Spring Rat Trap is a fast killer powerful enough to break a rat’s spine or neck. It relies on a spring-activated flap that kills the rat by clamping it with a great force once it is triggered. The trap is triggered very easily by the rat once it tries to take the bait positioned on a pressure-sensitive plate.

• The best way to set the Scissor Spring Rat trap is to place the bait first on the bait hook. Anything eatable can be placed there but I prefer to be more generous by placing a roasted piece of meat. The nice smell will attract the unwary rat faster than any other bait. Heating the piece of meat over a fire will do the trick.
• Pull the hooking wire backward.
• Pull back the “killer” flap 180 degrees and hold it down firmly with your thumb. Avoid at any cost working at the front of the trap. Let the front side of the trap face away from you so that things do not go bad and you end up clamping your fingers.
• Pass the loose wire over the flap and hook it to the trigger (the part with the bait).
• Holding the back of your trap, gently place your armed trap at a place the rats are guaranteed to visit.

You have to be careful when setting the Scissor Spring Rat Trap or else you might end up tripping and breaking your fingers. Where you place the trap is also important, make sure your kid(s) cannot reach it. Try also to imagine what would happen to your toes if you stepped on it barefooted. Ouch! again if you have pets that roam around the room, this trap might not be the best option for you.

One more thing, where do you take the dead rat? Of course to the garbage! That is what you are saying, yes, but not everyone, rat meat is a rare delicacy in some countries. Well, I am not suggesting that you eat your catch.

I have killed several rats and mice using the Scissor Spring Rat Trap; I will kill again any that strays into my abode.

Happy hunting.