I had a call yesterday from a very distressed caller in Reading about the rats in his garden.

We do get quite a few calls about plagues of killer rats roaming across gardens which turn out to be one or two passing through, but we always we take everything on face value, one rat to us is a plague to the house owner.

However, on this occasion, the caller could not have been more right!

When I arrived in the very pretty part of Reading, I was never expecting to see what I found. You sometimes see a fleeting glimpse of a rat scuttling off under a bush during daylight hours, but on this occasion, to see rats running along the fence, one after the other was a real shock. Even on big farms that are over-run, you only really see them at night.

The client told me the story that his neighbour keeps pigeons in a large shed at the bottom of the garden and the rat situation had slowly gotten worse over the last few weeks. These rats have been seen playing in the garden, running about on the fence and in the hedge at all times of day and night. As we stood there, I counted 15 rats run along the fence – not tiny ones, real big fat ones!!

They had dug burrows all under the fence, hedge and even in the lawn. They were sat in the branches of the hedge as well – I mean just sat looking at us!!

The neighbour was less than helpful – talk about in denial – I offered to go and survey the situation and make suggestions to deal with the problem, but he would not admit the problem existed.

This really puts my client in a real difficult situation as this is a major health risk which must be dealt with, but the neighbours would cause issues (he said they had before) and he doesn’t want a neighbour war on his hands.

I am now treating the problem, well from my clients side anyway, but I am going to monitor this situation – if it gets no better I will be forced to take further action to sort this.

Rat Problem Reading

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