I'm a live and let live sort of guy. I won't kill anything unless it absolutely has to happen, and then I feel bad.
When I lived in south orange County, we had bird feeders right in front of our kitchen window, along with our barbecue. We had rats and mice. It was the bird seed on the ground that the birds threw out of the feeders. There was no way I was going to eradicate the lot of them without removing the feeders too, which wasn't going to happen. The birds directly in front of our kitchen window were just so awesome to have there. I ended up screening in all the openings into my BBQ and that was that. No more rats into the BBQ.
While not ideal, I didn't really mind the rats and mice. They're just rodents. They help keep the Hawk and Owl population fed.
