Rats on palms

[Phoenikakias]

Things seem to get out of control in my garden. I am now seeing rats on many of my tallest palms. I suspect that in my small, crowded with palms garden, rats have now (as many of the palms grew tall) the possibility to travel from their original nest inside an ivy at the northern borders of my property along palmy crowns high above ground and thus beyond reach of lurking cats. I saw such a rat yesterday 'boarding'  my Brahea brandegeei from the adjacent leaf of my Arecastrum. I knew that ultimately to many palms fruiting would attract the rats of the whole area and therefore I took special care to remove infructescences and inflorescences of known prolificly fruiting palms such as Livistona chinensis and Brahea armata. But now rats found their way to  sparsely fruiting Brahea brandegeei and Washingtonia filifilibusta (it bloomed and fruited for the first time). Fruits of those palms are still far away from maturity but I fear that rats already feed on them... Is this possible, or, even worse eventually, do they feed on other plant parts? Is it possible that rats nets eventually on those palms?

[dalmatiansoap]

Never seen it but have heard about nesting in CIDPs crowns, so I believe it is possible. Poisoned bates up in the crown.

[Monòver]

Here is common see the rats in phoenix canariensis and dactyliferas. They eat the dates and makes his houses in the palms.

But i never saw the rats eating other part.

The squirrels eats the new flowers in washintonias, it is possible the rats makes the same.

I think you must buy one cat!

[Xhoniwaters1]

Had to deal with the same problem last year. Baited poison can be effective but expect to have to search for and dispose of the stink lurking around. Using snap traps seem to have worked the best. Rats will get into palm seedlings to search for the seed and depending on how hungry they are, may eat the seedling. 

[Tyrone]

The solution is a Boa constricta