Tomcat Rodent Station, 1 Station with Security Key | Station with 4 Bait-Securing Rods - Fits Rat or Mouse Sized Traps (Baits & Traps Sold Separately), Use Indoors or Outdoors

Within a day of putting two of these out, we caught both rats that had been coming out at night. It worked extremely well. We used with the snap trap that goes inside and is sold separately. This thing is extremely hard to open with the included key. We have to pay open with the a knife while using the key. While this is kind of irritating, it does give peace of mind as we have pets and kids. They would never be able to open this thing! Both the snap traps and the housing unit are durable and will easily be able to be reused many many times. We are happy with our purchase.

So my neighbor informed us they had roof rats. We didn’t but we bought these a preventive measure. And I have 5 of them around the house/shed. No roof rat problems so far. As far the people complaining they are hard to open, they are made that way on purpose. I don’t write reviews often but it irks me very much when people write reviews negative review because of their own incompetence. These are hard to open to stop small children and unwanted animals i.e. dogs/cats from getting to the bait. I don’t know about everyone else the instructions were not needed to figure out how to open it. And for your own protection and liability responsibility do not modify the lock mechanism on the traps. I can’t believe that needs to be said. Anyways great value easy to use if you use your head for more than a hat rack and in my observation they work. Update year later still going strong love them.

While the product is highly durable and secure once closed, I have found them consistently difficult to open. I have discovered that the most effective method for opening the station is to wedge a large flat-head screwdriver into the seam by the latch to apply pressure while inserting the key. Additionally, I recommend that users secure the stations with a small chain or heavy wire. While the boxes appear to be safe from children and pets, I have noted that raccoons may carry them away if they are not anchored. Overall, the boxes are very robust and seem built to last for several years.

Perhaps the most economical and functional rodent bait station of its kind, the Tomcat Rodent Station effectively eradicates a rodent infestation and keeps infestations from recurring with sustained use of bait blocks. Rodents are highly attracted to the apple-scented bait blocks and readily devour the poison. The bait stations have a tamper-resistant lock that can also be optionally deactivated.

For $10, the plastic box is acceptable quality. It should last several years in an outdoor environment and it's thick enough to endure several years of sunlight before the plastic becomes brittle and cracked. However, it is insanely difficult to open due to 2 very poorly designed locks that secure the rodent bait inside the clamshell box. There are 2 latch tabs on the bottom half of the shell that secure and lock against the top half of the shell. Tomkat provides a a thin brass key with 2 short legs that fits into 2 slots located adjacent to aforementioned tabs. Supposedly, if you push down and out, it pushes the bottom clamshell down and away from the tab, thus releasing it. You then repeat the process for the 2nd tab lock. The problem is the the brass key is too small and too thin and because of poor manufacturing tolerances, the two prongs of the keys don't match up with the slots cut into the clamshell alongside each tab. Because it takes a great deal of force to pry open the clamshells, I always end up bending the keys because they are simply too thin to do the job. Why they came up with such a stupid key design is beyond my comprehendsion. Obviously, they wanted to make the lock child-proof, but if the lock design also makes it adult-proof, it's an embarassingly idiotic design. My suggestion: Throw the damn key away. The easiest way to open up the clamshell is to use a butter knife or a small putty knife and pry the damn thing open. If you're going to do this, be advised that one or both of the tabs will break off, but you'll probably want to remove these tabs anyways with a pair of snips. Once you get rid of the tabs, the clamshell open and closes, but it won't lock. The solution is quite simple. Drill a 1/4" hole through one of the tab slots for each lock and secure the clamshell with a small zip tie. When you need to open the clamshell, clip off the zip ties. When you need to lock the clamshell, just put new zip ties. As for effectiveness of the trap (aside from the dopey lock design), it's a box. It's not the box that kills the rodents, it's the bait. The Tomcat Chunx bait works very well. The mice like it, they eat it, and then they die. It took 2 days for the 2 mice that have been hanging around my yard to discover the bait and die a good death from gastronomic poisoning. But it was the bait that did the job, not this awful trap. In hindsight, I didn't need this box. I have an old Plano fishing lure box lying around unused in my garage, not much bigger than the Tomkat Rodent Station. I could have removed accordion trays, drilled openings with a hole cutter for the mice to enter and assembled some bait rods using wire from clothes hangers drilled into and glued to a 1/4" plywood base to secure the bait. Any old plastic box will probably do, so long it's a similar size. If it's a clear box, paint it with plastidip and leave it out in the sun for 3 days until the plastic smell disappears. The mice need their privacy when they eat, hence the need for paint. Bottomline: Anyone who buys Tomcat Rodent Station had better well be prepared to deal with the stupid locks. You're going to spend a half hour trying to open up the box and bending the key, so like the majority of the people who reviewed the box, you'll end prying it open with a butter knife or a screw driver and breaking the tabs off. Advice: Find a better bait station or make your own.

I have found that the best way to get rid of mice is to set poison bait stations OUTSIDE the house, killing them before they ever get the chance to come in. I've used various home made contraptions over the years to make the poison blocks available to mice but not to other critters, while keeping the poison protected from rain etc. Figured I'd give the Tomcat Rodent Station a try, since that is pretty much what it's made for. It's a decent sized plastic box - the overall dimensions are about right for outdoor use. It's big enough that it won't blow away in the wind or get lost under snow. And it holds 4 bait blocks, which is plenty. So it gets the job done. I have several nits to pick though: 1) It is nigh on IMPOSSIBLE to open. The supplied key is completely useless. You'll need 2 large flathead screwdrivers or something similar - one to pry it open with and the other to hold it open as you pry a little more. It is unnecessarily difficult to say the least! I get that the point is to keep kids and pets from gaining access to poison, but c'mon... Can't they come up with a better design that that? 2) Bait blocks not included. Which makes this a little bit expensive, considering it is really just a plastic box. 3) It includes 4 metal rods, which can hold the bait blocks in a vertical position and keep them from falling out if the box gets jostled. That's great, but my bait blocks (despite being Tomcat brand) are not drilled with holes to receive the rods. The picture on the box indicates that Tomcat does make drilled bait blocks, but I don't know where to buy them. So for me, the rods are pretty much useless.

Wow, so we had a rain storm here in Florida, during a massive community wide garage sale. Our garage doors were open and we saw this giant, I mean large rat run in from our mulch bed to our garage. Everyone panicked lol. It was like a scary movie. First night I tried some good mousetraps (20 bucks for 6 of them, they were legit ones with claws on the snapper etc, but the rat was able to get the peanut butter and set off the traps but they weren't going to get him. So I ordered two tomcat boxes as well as a pail of the tomcat feeding pods (the 4lb pail of green pods). I placed two of these black boxes which are pet safe for dogs and cats, along the walls of the inside of my garage. The morning after I placed them, I opened the first box and sure enough, two of the tomcat pods had been chewed on. That was Tuesday night they were placed. Wednesday morning I checked the box and saw it nibbled on. I told my wife on Wednesday night that we should expect anytime from Thursday to Sunday, this rat to be dead. I said 1 of 2 things is going to happen, this rat I saw twice, run up to a ceiling rack in my garage as I heard traps going off late at night and I ran over to the garage to check out if they got it. Well, I said it's 1. Going to fall out of one of the racks once this poison takes over. Or 2. It would die in the rack, or perhaps it's on the shelving or somewhere else in the garage at the time it hits it. You never know where those things are because they hide. It's Thursday morning, I hear this scream and I didn't know if my wife was being attacked but within two seconds I realized she was going out to work. The rat had dropped out of the ceiling rack and slid off her SUV as she backed out. Not kidding. I said to her this was best case because we didn't have to be spooked taking things off our ceiling racks and all our shelving searching for a dead rat. I kid you not. It was sitting on our driveway and I scooped it up in to a small box and disposed everything in a sanitary way. So pleased with this stuff. First night, it lured the rat. It says it works off one feeding and after 1-4 days of the feeding. We experienced this all just as it said it would happen. I could not be happier. Two tomcat black boxes and one bucket of this stuff was just over fifty bucks. The cost for an exterminator would have been far more, I have enough of this now for a long time. I am so happy we went after it before it got inside the house by eating through the drywall of the garage and did major damage to wiring etc. It actually in just the first night, had eaten off and shredded the weather sealing on about 6" worth of it, on our door in our garage that leads to the house. Shredded it. It was a panic in the home for a few nights here but this was the perfect remedy and it's addressed. GREAT product!!!!! Follow the directions, couldn't have been easier. In 2 minutes I had the box and poison pods on the rods, all done. It worked EXACTLY as it said it would.

Using these outside and in the basement. I believe they are working. Something has been eating them. Haven't seen any activity.

Does the job well, separating the container can be difficult, but not impossible

I could not unlock it with the key supplied , at the end I returned the item and got my money back. There may be a special trick to unlock it but I found it way too hard to unlock.