Personally I would be quite relaxed about a single rat in my backyard.
I might even go so far as to suggest that from a health and wellbeing point of view, the greater danger may come from the poison and the unnecessary worry about the rat...
Trust me, there is never just one rat.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
That's exactly what I would have said @BobTheGardener. It's also the knock on effect - if they're in one plot, they're going into others. Correctly used, the bait/poison doesn't affect other wildlife IME.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
There is never just a single rat. You may be seeing different rats from a colony. Keep putting down poison. My neighbours had chickens at one time and there was a continual stream of rats in my garden. Although the numbers have reduced lately I still see the occasional unwanted visitor cleaning up under the bird feeder.
I'm afraid I really don't like decking ... it makes such a perfect home for rats ... just like the slatted floors of the old fashioned henhouses of my childhood on the farm.
Rats are social creatures ... they live in colonies, they are not solitary animals.
Few things are not quite right in that link Dove, they are sexually active long before 3 months old. They also give birth in burrows, nothing they like better than to make holes all over your garden, especially under decking, They can become 2000 easily in one year.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Unless you live on a rubbish dump though their population won't explode out of control because they won't have enough food. Without a food source they have no reason to live in the area, so working out what they are eating is the simplest way to move them on. If you kill the rats but don't remove/find the food source then they will likely just come back. We had them living in our compost heap when the next door neighbours had the chickens. I simply disturbed the nest and they moved on. Since the chickens have gone we have had no more problems.
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It's also the knock on effect - if they're in one plot, they're going into others. Correctly used, the bait/poison doesn't affect other wildlife IME.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Rats are social creatures ... they live in colonies, they are not solitary animals.
"...Female rats can mate around 500 times in a six-hour period and brown rats can produce up to 2,000 offspring in a year, ..." https://www.livescience.com/52342-rats.html
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
They can become 2000 easily in one year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9mALbjFNQ
Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border.
We had them living in our compost heap when the next door neighbours had the chickens. I simply disturbed the nest and they moved on. Since the chickens have gone we have had no more problems.