You all know that I not only talk the talk about frugality and green living, but I also walk the walk. I’m out there hanging my laundry on the clothesline, borrowing books from the library and shopping Goodwill for all my family’s needs. I clean with homemade eco-friendly cleaners, batch errands when driving, produce minimal garbage and compost yard debris and food scraps.
Or do I?
Actually I don’t compost at home anymore, but let me explain the circumstances. I bought my first compost bin in 1997, and added a second one a few years ago when a neighbor was throwing one out. My lovely shaded backyard translates to 70 bajillion dropped leaves in the fall, so an extra compost bin was a welcome addition to my life. And for years and years, I had no problems with the compost bins. Sure, I’d see an occasional mouse in the bin, but I didn’t let that bother me too much.
But then came the rats.
The rats that built an empire in and around the the bins, nibbled a hole in the foundation of my house behind the bins and then formed a settlement in my basement.
Rats!
Rats!
Rats!
In all, my husband and I (plus the neighbors, who were catching them in their yard next to the compost) caught twenty or so rats. (We have since cemented over the hole the rats had made.) There are three locked and loaded traps in the basement that haven’t been triggered in almost three weeks, so we’re thinking we got them all.
And those compost bins? I put them on the curb with a free sign, and they were gone in under an hour.
Good thing Portland, Oregon has curbside composting.
Shudder.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you considered a composter that closes? We have a tumbling composter that latches tight and is off the ground, so would be nearly rat-proof. Granted it was not frugal ($100 at Costco), but I have seen some on Craig’s List! We don’t have curbside compost (jealous!), so this works for us. And it composts stuff super fast!
The rats ate through the thick plastic! And having a compost bin off the ground would be a good solution. However, I happily promised my husband that I was all done composting.
Katy
Holy cow! I was told I was done with composting too until we got this contraption lol. But you have a fabulous alternative with your awesome city 🙂
Eek! I can understand why you might never want to compost again. For others still considering…keep your compost AWAY from the house!
But our side yard is around four feet wide, so we didn’t really have a better option.
Katy
mice are one thing. rats are another.
good riddance!
No kidding. We still haven’t cleaned the basement out yet. THAT will be a revolting chore.
Katy
This is the same reason my mom pulled her citrus trees, they attracted a horde of rats that nearly took over the attic! I was so sad to see them pulled, but growing your own citrus vs. having crazy citrus-loving, disease-carrying rats is a no brainer.
This makes me grateful to have enough yard space to compost out by the garden over 200 feet from the house.
Oh my.
We aren’t composting anymore right now due to other reasons, but this certainly makes me feel less guilty about it!
I think I just threw up in my mouth…
I had three straight weeks of throwing up in my mouth. However, I our neighborhood block party was dab smack in the middle of when we were dealing with all this, and I learned that everyone on our street has been having rat problems over the past year. This made me feel a little better. Plus we were able to deal with it without spending hundreds of dollars on an exterminator.
A teeny-tiny silver lining.
Katy
Being frugal doesn’t mean you need to do everrrrrything (thank goodness! because I’d fail!). So while it was a valiant effort, glad you’re not doing it. Rats are just no bueno.
I hope the neighbors don’t have any rat problems anymore either 🙁
The neighbors all said that they dealt with their rat problems, although they all hired exterminators.
Katy
I stopped composting for the very same reason. And putting food out for the birds.
We live in Portland and we had rats in our compost last year too. It was awful–rodents make me scream like a little girl. I had to call in an exterminator, who set “bait stations”. This all happened right around the time Portland started the curbside compost, so we switched to that and a year later, our rat problems seem to have disappeared. I’m going to miss the soil we made, but I feel better knowing that Portland has reduced it’s garbage by 40% and 2500 truckloads of garbage have been eliminated in the past year because of curbside compost pickup! And the rats are gone for now. http://www.masterrecycler.org/PDF/MR_September_2012_newsletter.pdf
It’s a bigger problem than I ever realized. And I too screamed, or rather gurgle/screamed. It was a noise I wasn’t aware I was capable of.
Katy
No rats here, but we had to stop feeding the birds because the squirrels (AKA “tree rats”) started eating all the bird food, chewing through the (aluminum!) soffit, and making themselves at home in our attic. They’re cute and they amused the cats, but they had to find somewhere else to live. No vermin!
We had snakes in our compost bin. After my run-in in the backyard a few years ago with a copperhead, I don’t do snakes.
We regifted the compost bin.
Ewww…I don’t compost for the same reason. I don’t want to encourage the vermin here. We had rats at my old house around the bins and that’s not far from this house. Its bad enough with foxes living under my decking at times.
Foxes under your decking?! I’m sorry, but that’s just cute!
Katy
I live in a dense n’hood in NE Portland, and we’ve been noticing rats over the past couple of years as well. I’m sure they’ve been around all along, but it’s really only been in the past couple of years that I’ve heard anyone in the city proper saying they’ve seen them. I have composting neighbors on either side of me, and a neighbor with chickens a couple of doors down (I’ve heard that rats love chicken coops.) I’ve yet to see a live rat, although I’ve seen several dead ones thanks another neighbor’s hunter-cat.
In addition to the rats, we’ve got TONS of squirrels, frequent raccoon sightings, mice and possums (although not nearly the number of possums we’d see in the 70-80’s growing up in Portland.)
I’m thankful for the curbside composting. Can’t handle the rats and other vermin and if not for the citywide composting, all of that would be going into my trash.
Rats DO love chicken coops. Waaay back when I was a child, the people next door got themselves some chickens, and we had rats in our barn (in the city). Neighbors called the police because of the “no livestock in the city” ordinance, and my dad tried everything to get rid of the rats. He didn’t want to use poison because we were little kids at the time, and finally ended up borrowing a farm cat that had a reputation for getting rid of all vermin. Nice kitty! It did the trick.
A lot of urban homesteaders want to have chickens in the city. While I can understand that, I don’t think that’s a good idea, at all because of the potential rodent problem.
The city where I live has been testing curbside composting with the hopes to expand it city-wide by 2015.
Since I live in a condo it makes it a bit harder to compost, as I’d rather have a bin next to my future garden at my future house.
My friends who compost built a lockable bin to keep out the vermin.
The rats bit through the thick plastic, so locking it would have been useless.
Katy
The worst we have endured was a small possum in our open air leaf composter. My kids thought it was fabulous, but I waited a few days to go back out there! Although the fruit fly/gnats are bad, I can deal for now. I used to see rats in the streets when I lived in Chicago. That is just a non-starter near your house.
Ah! I am not currently composting, and I’m afraid this just turned me off completely! As is, my cat brings gifts of mice and rats more often than I’d like (sometimes two a week, then a few weeks off, then one a week for three weeks). Snakes in the compost? Oh, heck no! I’m not scared of critters, but when a snake spots me before I spot it … eek! Our city does not offer curbside composting. 🙁 We paid $4 extra a month to participate in the program in our last city, I’d gladly go along with that option here. But we do have curbside recycling, something we didn’t have in the previous city … guess that’s the trade-off and part of the reason it’s called the Dirty South.
That just scared the crap out of me. Suddenly the stray cats who bring fleas seem like my BFFs. I will watch my bins from now on like a hawk . . . a hawk who murders rats.
Katy, all of Portland is having the same problem. I’ve heard it’s because they’ve stopped trying to keep the sewer rat problem under control.
Ironically, I stopped in to read your blog as a treat before I went and set out rat traps.
Shudder. At least none of us are alone!!!
Fully understand and sympathize with you, Katy! A few years ago we (living in the country and farming area) had wheat all around our home place (we live up a lane). After they combined the wheat we had rats everywhere….in our chicken house…getting our chickens…in our pole barn, etc. Every year we battle mice in the country…but this was like a plague. Totally freaked me out. This year we have been haunted by mice eating things in the garden. Really, really dry here this year and they are seeking out what they can. I have no tolerance for rats or mice. I am totally creeped out along with ya! I say, you gave it a lot of fortitude to deal with it as long as you did and I certainly commend you for finding a way to continue to compost. Since we have the chickens, they are our “composters’.
The only positive thing I can find to say about the coyotes moving in is that our vermin population is greatly reduced. Haven’t seen many squirrels lately, either. Now if they’d just get onto the dang gophers …
I just have to ask, was it just the leaves that were being composted or were you adding food scraps to the compost? I can see rats going after the food scraps, but why would they go after the leaf scraps? I guess I don’t know that much about composting.
The compost had leaves, random yard debris, grass and yes, food scraps.
Katy
they like the compost, because it’s warm, sometimes food and they can nest in it. If you have gartner snakes in your compost, though it’s freaky, that’s Good. They eat the mice and rats.
I have a huge fenced in garden (to keep out the deer) and when I turn the compost, I have to keep my border collie out, because she likes to eat the snakes. Bad dog!!!
My giant Irish Wolfhound will chase deer and garbage trucks, but he runs from rats!
Rats are a deal breaker. I am not freaked out by any other wildlife – snakes (we have found a few baby snakes in the house over the years, they come in thru our ancient stone foundation), coyotes, raccoons, but I cannot even conceive of having rats.
Eww my bin is right by e house and it was full of snakes this summer…connecting the dots. Going to move it tomorrow I think!!!
Are you putting meat and fat in your compost? We have used ours with no problem but it is only leaves, grass, and vegetable peelings, eggs, and coffee grounds. No meat or scraps from the table. I’d freak out if I saw rats or snakes in ours. But we live in an older neighborhood “downtown” and I do know there are those critters living right here with us. My husband was bitten by a copperhead (baby) while walking our dog on the sidewalk and he told me he had seen a sewer rat one day crossing the street. We live in the south, btw.
No fats or meat, just tea, coffee, fruit and veggies. No prepared foods, no dairy.
Katy
I use to raise domestic rats, had quite a few actually and loved it but those wild ones always gross me out, they carry way too many diseases and can get huge! Domestic ones you can control their size by how much you feed them! I think that would make me quit composting too!
Ewwwww!! but I have to say, very entertaining! From a distance, that is 🙂
Really, I do sympathize. I’d be freaked out too.
I live in the country and I know there are rats outside. But, because I have a very large piece of land around my house, my compost is far away from my house. If there are rats back there, I have not seen them. We also have neighborhood cats that roam the yard and keep a lot of the rodents under control. Along with: hawks, owls, coyotes, etc.
Katy, you’re not the only one with a rat problem. We had the same thing several years ago. First saw 1 rat in the yard near the compost. Then within a year, some in the crawl space and attic of our house. Ugh! It took an entire winter of trapping to get them all, a family of about a dozen. We’ve since bought an off the ground tumbling composter. Worm bins might also be a good solution. I’ve know people who kept vermi-composters in their basements.
There was one small positive thing that came from the rat infestation near the compost bin, one year — I saw an owl, in the tree above the bin that year, one of those great big owls. I never expected to see one like that. He perched there on the branch and watched me. I stood still, and when he realized I was not a threat, he turned his head all the way around to the other side. I just never dreamed I’d see something like that in the suburbs.
we live in a townhouse only one block from a lightrail station in the western suburbs of portland. on a walking trail along the creek which runs a hundred yards from our door we occasionally see beaver and red foxes. squirrels are abundant and a raccoon was spotted sitting on the sidewalk across the street a few nights ago. we have not seen rats, but they must be there. my tiny garden, about 200 square feet is fed by compost made in an off the ground tumbler and from compost dumped in holes in the raised beds, mixed with dirt and covered by several inches of soil. so far, so good.
i wonder what one can do with rats? if the economy keeps declining perhaps we will be reduced to rat pie and rat fur jackets. eeeuw!
i remember that in the late 1800’s young, plump rats were sold in street markets as food.
One thing I have learned about rodents and composting is if you are vigilant about turning, the rodents don’t stick around. It’s when a laid back approach to turning is used, that they hang out and have mega families. Of course, once they have moved in, it can be difficult to get rid of them (I’ve chopped a few mice in half in the compost with my spade, and that seems to have deterred them!)
That said, I composted for many years without a rodent issue, everything from food scraps to yard waste. I only started seeing rodents when we had new neighbours move in and the kids used the 2 foot side of land beside my garage as their personal “waste disposal” spot…and yeah, it’s exactly what you might think…
Finally catching up, I’m a few weeks behind! I’ve wanted a composting area for years, but after the container gardening experience 5 years ago that led to the Rat Infestation of 5 yrs ago those dreams quickly vanished.
The county cleared a very large piece of land across the way from our group of homes. Must have been quite the home for the rats or something because right after that we all had them everywhere. We even had rats chasing squirrels. I decided to break out in hives after seeing that one.
The exterminator said our house was the favorite because of our efforts to try to keep a container garden area going on our front porch and back deck. He said we were basically providing a lovely salad bar for all the rats and everything had to go. No arguement here, like we really wanted any home grown produce the rats left…
After traps were set, foundation and whatever other holes found were filled we all finally were rid of them in about a month’s time.
Every year I get all excited thinking of composting and gardening, but then this memory comes back along with the exterminator’s warning to all of us about starting up any vegetable gardening or composting in our area and the possibility of them returning…NO THANK YOU!