We store everything in food grade plastic containers and we keep those stacked in the basement, they have nice fitting lids that snap on like Tupperware. We then fill large clamp jars from those containers for kitchen use.
I have mice around my chicken coop quite often but haven’t had any in the house or basement. I always keep the Victor spring traps set around the coop hidden from the dog and the chickens. If I catch one there are usually 3 or 4 more right behind and then they are gone for while. I don’t like the sticky traps, you can’t reuse them, nuts work good but whatever bait I use I tie it on with a piece of thread and set the traps back to back so if they jump away they land on another trap.

Yesterday I went to Wally and bought "Catchmaster", baited glue traps. Non-toxic, 4 to a box for $1.95. Set them in various places. Wife just stomped on the floor (our jungle telegraph) to come upstairs and lo and behold Mickey was stuck and struggling. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there are NO more or FEW more. We've got traps all over the place. Of course, wife would not dispose of the trapped critter - it was still struggling - so I decided to execute him or her. I chose for it 'death by suffocation'; found a plastic container with lid in the garage, pushed the trap into it and sealed it tight. We had the traps set all day, since 0330 this morning. It wasn't until I took Toe's suggestion and placed half an almond in the trap did we see some action. I wasted some almonds but that is cheaper than our food supply. We think the little critters came in through the dryer vent.

P.S. The traps are made in the USA!

My house in Pa. had a dirt basement ,, I dug it out level, and put down cement basement, same in shed, and put a coating of cement in and out over the stone base and put heavy kick plates on all doors in and out same for shed and add very heavy duty wire mesh around all vent pipes , YES it's lots of hard work ,, but pays...

First the rats are looking for shelter and safe area, in house building look to stone or block , to keeps out rats, water, bugs, etc... it,s how you must do and any flash floods helps again .. all wood is asking for trouble ,, look at any old house in PA.. they did things with a reason, even a brick base will pay back a million times over......

No...I never found droppings at all and would not have known he was even there if I had not seen him with my own eyes. I have not seen anything that shows any damage from the rat yet. The remains I was talking about were the rat's remains after the cat ripped him up. He was in pieces and piles all over in front of our freezer for me to clean up. If not for the tail, I would not have known what it was. A few days later, she caught another one outside and left it on the porch for me. I have no clue why we have gotten rats all of a sudden but we all live in river towns. I did ask a couple of my neighbors and they said they always had a few in the area until we moved there with our hairball cat. She has cleaned the neighborhood up of all rodents including squirrels and chipmunks and should be putting a dent in the rabbit population but it sure doesn't appear to be so...yet.

The rat seemed to run between our office and the fireplace. We have since removed everything but my sauna from that room and not one dropping anywhere. I have no clue how he got in or where he was living for those few days. I don't know how he got past the cat!

Last summer, LG got two rats in his house too. Much larger than the ones our cat killed. He trapped them and needs to share what and how he did that. The idea of the filth and germs they carry creeped him out though and he moved out of his house and has yet to move back. We are currently in the process of redoing his house from top to bottom and will permanently seal up anything we may find. In his case...they chewed right through the wall of his house to enter. Just amazing considering he kept very little food since he worked away most of the time.

I will add that I have had too much experience with rats from working in the inner cities. I have even been chased down an alley by hundreds of rats that were being displaced. I had to jump up on a boom truck and they were trying to leap up to get me. It takes weeks of treating those row homes before you can ever put a crew in them to start the demo. I watched rats climb right up through people's downspouts and chew through their roofs for entry. They are very scary creatures and in mass they are just plain frightening. Since decon and other methods are now taboo and being taken from the market, I have no clue how we will deal with them in the future. Stock up now is all I can think of and get a good hairball cat.

Rats are nasty critters and they have a need to gnaw (not a need to know). I had a well built 12x16' shed out in the woods under the tree canopy and stashed some canned goods and other supplies in it for emergency use. A large woodrat had gnawed through a 1x10 and then through a piece of 3/4" plywood and was in the process of eating through a can when I opened the door and saw him escape through the hole he had carved in the side of the shed. I placed several rat traps in the room and caught him, then patched the hole. If you were to place a woodrat in a steel cage his front teeth would grow out long enough to curl into his mouth and he would eventually die from this because they need to gnaw to keep their teeth at a reasonable size.

I store most my food in shed/parking garage , had rats about 2 years ago , they got into a box of MRE's and destroyed it, I had to use rat kill food and seal a few small holes in sheet metal, nothing else worked , all food now in metal cans.........

fern, when you say remains do you mean droppings? Or did the electronic gadget do its job?

Like you Watchman, we had our first rodent this year but it was a rat (and it was summertime!). We used 4 different types of traps including the sticky types and never did catch it. It took several days but our cat finally got it. I went through all our stored foods and thank goodness nothing had been touched.

I did buy those electronic high pitched noise things at lowes and put one in the house where I had seen the rat and one in the basement where all the items are stored. I thought that was helping until I found the remains by the freezer.

We store all grain, rice, birdseed, flour and anything that comes packaged in a feedsack inside a new galvanized garbage can with a tight fitting lid so as to keep any potential uninvited furry critters from getting it. Also have 2 cats that will attack anything that moves. When retrieving things like a cup of rice from store room we are careful not to spill any so as not to leave anything readily available for them to eat. For some reason there are no mice in this area, never seen any in the woods, no kangaroo rats or woodrats either. Possibly too many predators that keep the population down and I hope it stays that way.
If you do detect a varmint in your house you must go into high gear immediately to catch it before one turns into 20. Alls fair in love and mouse hunting. Conventional Victor mouse traps still work the best, but not those new jobs with the yellow plastic bait . One half of an almond wedged into the bait tray will work without drawing as many ants into the house as peanut butter does. Traps must be monitored to make sure they have not been sprung from vibration or near misses.

For the first time ever, we have detected a mouse-in-the-house! I am quite concerned about our food storage area but we have found no evidence of an invasion there. The best advice I have seen without using poisons, is a D-Con sticky trap baited with peanut butter.

What problems have you-all had and how did you handle it?