First off, I beg you, DO NOT relocate rats caught in these traps! I promise you, they are NOT in danger of extinction! Just drop the trap, with the rat in it, into a tub of enough water to cover the trap. They will drown in just a few minutes. Then dig a hole, dump the drowned rat into the hole, and cover it up. If you have several to catch, you can keep the tub of water for future drownings, just keep it away from small children and wear gloves when drowning and disposing of the rat. This trap is smaller than the one I bought at a garage sale but it still gets the job done. We live in the country in Oklahoma, and ranchers around us do controlled burn-off of their pastures at least once a year, usually twice. When this happens, the rats all flee from their burrows in the pastures, where they serve nature well by being food for predatory birds and coyotes, to our homes, where they get into our garages, and can cause considerable damage. Our neighbors have dogs and cats that roam free, and of course there's the wildlife, so poisons are not good choices, mostly because it takes the rat 3 or 4 days to die after having consumed some. The poisons also are not cheap. My neighbors told me they have spent $100 on rat poison, just during this last infestation, caused by an accidental wildfire rather than ranchers burning off. We have so far trapped, drowned, and buried 128 rats this time, using this trap and the one I already had, plus four spring-type rat traps. We've also had 8 mice that ate the bait in the cage traps without tripping the latch. They were caught in spring-type mouse traps. DO NOT use the spring-type mouse or rat traps out in the open. You will catch birds and there is great danger that a cat or dog will get a paw caught in these traps. They snap down VERRRRRY hard and can do serious damage. Plus it might be hard then to catch the cat or dog to remove the trap. I put the spring-type traps in enclosed areas, like in our garage, in our sheds, and in a space between two cabinets that I can close off the front opening with a tall bucket. Oh, and drill a hole in the trap so you can loop a cord in the hole and attach the end to a brick, as sometimes a rat has enough life left to crawl under something and you lose your trap, plus there's a decaying rat somewhere. That's another problem with poison, too, it's just not true that they try to get outside after they've been poisoned. They crawl into boxes, into walls, into the motor well OF YOUR FREEZER to die. Trust me. But back to the Have-A-Heart trap: bait your trap with peanut butter. I dedicate a small jar just for bait and I use a plastic disposable knife to transfer peanut butter from the jar to the trap. Smear it into the groove in the center of the rocker inside the trap. The rat will enter the trap because it can smell the peanut butter. If the rat has to work to get to it, the chances of tripping the trap are excellent. You will know you have a rat in the cage because they run back and forth in the cage and you will hear the rocker creaking. There is also a better chance you can use the same bait over and over again when the peanut butter is embedded, sort of, into the rocker. Try to put the trap where birds will not get into it. We release a bird every now and then. Rats are most active during the night, at dawn, and at dusk. Birds are generally not very active during these times. Remember rats like to run where a vertical surface meets a horizontal: along raised beds, fences, walls. Oh, and sometimes the rat will hide under the rocker so be careful you don't accidentally turn one loose, thinking the trap was sprung by the wind (and this does happen sometimes). If you really want to get on top of a rat infestation, you cannot be lazy. Check your traps several times a day. Empty them and then set them right back up.
