animal management

I have spotted the rat out during the day a few times. Just for the sake of grammatical comfort, let's assume there is just one really fat rat that I'm dealing with here. I saw another path of travel it uses. I'll move the bait station to that one, and later, over to the worm bin area. I cleaned out the coop and put the wood chips in a spot where I'd like the kitchen compost pile. I set the live trap on there, adjoining a cinder block I saw the rat climb through. This morning the live trap was sprung, but I don't know if it was chickens or Mona doing her ditz run through the coop area.

I gave the chickens scratch inside the coop. Blackie and Yellow Cheep both went inside. I came out onto the patio so they'd get used to me being out there while they are inside. I came out later when Little Red was inside the coop, too. Tomorrow I am going to get two of them inside and then shut them in. I'll probably have to catch at least one chicken, unfortunately. I don't know how long I will need to jail them in there. One, I want to know if anybody is laying. Two,
I want to cut the rat off from the chicken food. We'll see if that makes the bait or the peanut butter more tempting to the rat. I should also get a glue trap too.