I’ll bet you do have nuts! As I look across the kitchen from where I am writing, I see a big jar of Planters peanuts and next to it is another big jar of Kirkland’s Marcona Almonds. (These are SO GOOD! but the store supply is seasonal, so you need to buy many jars when they are in.) Right next to the jars is the frig where we keep the walnuts. (I don’t know why.) Just checked the pantry and found an unopened bag of Blue Diamond lightly salted almonds. Anyway, we definitely got nuts, and I bet you do too.
Now, how about rats? Do you have rats? We have rats because we have citrus trees. Unfortunately we park our cars in the driveway nearby and rats love to make a nest in the engine compartment. Those little b*#&+%s (I’ve never sworn in a blog before—can you tell?) ate wiring in our Yukon. That was expensive. They also did a job on our air conditioning condenser on the other side of the house. Not cheap either. Anyway . . . we know rats. We have also killed a lot of rats, and one of the problems is disposing of the carcass. If you just put it in the garbage, it will probably stink up that whole side of the house even when you bag it. We have had to resort to double Ziploc bagging the varmint and putting it in the freezer until garbage day. The problem is that we often forget it, and when we discover it several weeks later when looking for dinner, it’s rather disturbing.
Now, how about tomatoes? Since you are a gardener in the Sacramento Valley, I know you have tomato plants—It’s the law. Don’t you just hate it when a rat gets into your tomato plant and takes just one bite out of your best tomatoes? (Insert you own swear word here: ____________.
Now that we have determined you have nuts, rats, and tomatoes, let’s get ready to kill those suckers. (Is that swearing?) You have baited your rat traps with peanut butter before, and that works well, but I am always disappointed when the ants get to the bait first, leaving me with a very clean, empty trap. Here is what you need to do. Take one of your nuts—preferably an almond—and hot glue it to the trip pedal. Do this before you set the trap, or you will end up with hot glue everywhere! Now you have a trap that can be used over and over.
I’ll leave trap placement up to you. One of my favorites is to secure it to the limb of a citrus tree with green tape or a zip tie. Somehow it is more satisfying to find a rat hanging suspended from a trap. I have also found it advantageous to drill a hole in the corner of the trap and attach a cord when positioning a trap on a fence or on a ledge.
I know you hate to give up a nut, but it’s only one. I was going to use a marcona almond, but couldn’t bear to lose one, and opened the Blue Diamond bag instead.

Rat trap baited with almond
Happy trapping, Stan, The Nut Man
P.S. I just ordered an ultrasonic rodent repellant deterrent device from Amazon that will attach to my new car’s battery. I figure $24 is cheap insurance preventing over $1000 worth of damage.