Chicago, overrun by rats, pleads for feral cats.

[SDJay]

8. We Have That Problem in North County San Diego

There are rats, mice, skunks, possum, raccoons, moles, gophers and all sorts of critters in my yard at any point during the night. The rats in particular have gotten bad. I don't mind the possum. One of our dogs is a rescue that was a stray and kills anything he can grab. He has taken out dozens of rats over the past few years if not more. The problem is that I need to see this happen because if I don't he eats them. Another thing this does is mostly keep the raccoons and skunks away, as they don't want to mess with dogs if they can avoid them.

I won't poison them - that's too cruel and dangerous for any other critters that may want a snack. Traps get filled almost nightly, but that's like throwing a deck chair off the proverbial Queen Mary. I've been told by an exterminator that I know that (a) for every rat you see, there are probably 25 more nearby somewhere and that (b) every rat you kill means that probably about 100 will never be born.

What we're doing is installing a barn owl house. It's only about a 50/50 chance that a family of owls will move in, maybe less in an old-school city-type neighborhood. If they do, though, barn owls will eat their weight in rodents every single night and stick around for the long haul.

Not sure if that's feasible for folks in colder/urban environments, but we're hoping it does the trick. We've seen a few owls fly by over the years. Hopefully a family of them decide to call our yard home. That seems to be the best possibility of controlling the population. Our drought has really pushed the critters out of the eastern part of SD County towards the coast where we live.