... part of town and I think the rats branched out when things shut down--they invaded our garage).

They were ignoring most of my traps but I finally found a solution that got them within a night or two. I got some narrow cardboard boxes (barely the width of a standard spring arm rat trap, and tall enough to let the arm swing over) and cut a little cartoon mouse hole in the corner. Then I baited and slid the trap inside and set the boxes in high-traffic areas where it was obvious they were exploring (excrement, chew signs, etc). The narrow box meant they had to walk straight on towards the trap which optimized the kill angle, and I think being inside a box made it appear more safe and appealed to the exploration factor.

To give a better visual on what I did, it was sort of a combination of placing the trap in a narrow, but tall, box like this:



Only instead of ripping off the entire side of the box, I cut a hole like the one in this box to make it more cozy and inviting instead of open and threatening (so it ends up looking like this, only taller):



A few of those setups in hotspots and I got them pretty quickly.