If you live in the
desert, and own anything, anything at all...pack rats are the
bane of your residence. They are named for their persistent thievery...they'll steal your
nuts and bolts, your
keys, your
wires, your
batteries, large pieces of
material shredded from your
towels, your
clothes, your plastic thermal
pool cover, your
guitar case, your
wallpaper, your
suitcase; they'll shred your
documents (after
urinating and
defecating all over them), they'll steal your
food, they'll devour anything they can
stomach, and what they can't stuff down their greedy
throats they'll carry away to their
filthy lairs, and what they can't carry -- I swear -- they'll
vandalize.
That said, the pack rat is a brown-gray rodent that is smaller than a breadbox but will only barely fit in a tennis ball canister. They have large, Mickey-mouse like ears, long tails, and fierce, fierce claws. They are quite clever and are very difficult to catch or kill directly. The only thing that will tip you off that a rat is in your garage at that very moment is a faint scrabbling noise. Very occasionally, if your rat control has been poor, they will brazenly steal your stuff right before your eyes. This is humiliating.
Pack rats are most easily controlled by a system of live traps that change locations periodically and a reliable BB gun. Posioned ammo is an option, but I didn't hate them quite as much as my father did. Rat poison, unless you personally inject three times the lethal dose into the rat's major blood vessels, is ineffective.
Place baited live traps close to the walls of the house during the day, bait with peanut butter. Check the traps every day. Cart any rats away at least 5 miles. If you happen upon a live rat that's not in a trap (this is relatively rare), call for help immediately. Such rats are usually hiding behind something, and having a second person to block the other escape route is very important. Load the BB gun, and shoot, shoot, shoot. Aim for the body -- the skull is hard enough to where the pellets don't always penetrate -- and put the rat out of its misery immediately by submerging it in a bucket of water. Wrap the corpse in several layers of plastic and dispose of in an appropriate manner.
If the rat is trapped, say, in a box or bag, or it's caught in the live trap but you'd prefer to kill it, put the whole thing in the freezer. The rat will usually become comatose and/or die. This is more humane than it sounds, as humans who have come near death of cold report that it's a peaceful, sleepy sort of near-death experience.
How can we kill all these rats, you ask? How can we live with ourselves? Well, for every one we kill, ten more spring up...there's no shortage of pack rats, that's for sure. Try to avoid going into a berzerk animal rage while trying to kill the rats, though, because they're better at being animal than you are and they will escape.
I kept a pack rat that I caught as a pet for awhile once. Didn't work too well. The rat tried to bite me when I tried to pet it, and the one time it didn't, it was trying to relax my guard so it could escape. They're funny to watch, but they're irrevocably wild. Anyone could have told me that, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try. My father could only barely tolerate a live pack rat under our very roof, so eventually it had to go.
Don't be fooled by appearances. They're kinda cute, but pack rats are more evil than scorpions, coyotes, rattlesnakes, field mice, gila monsters, cholla cactus, or any of that other crap with posion fangs, needles, or stingers that lives out here.