There is a garbge bad targeted for city dewller . Bag is scented in mint rats supose to hate smell of mint. maybe try surrounding tree with ring of mint oil.
That Bonide Rat Magic has 4 oils that supposedly repel rats. You make a 2 ft wide perimeter around your entire yard. We tried it but then it rained lightly. You're supposed to reapply after heavy rains. Still debating if I want to spend another $20 on another container. I can't remember if mint was listed. I do remember cedar was.
Wow what damage..... I can't even believe it's a rat. You can get that tree saver tape until you get rid of them. That will stop them from chewing completely around the trunk. Once that happens the tree will die... There is no saving it....so the tape is a temporary fix.
Mary I would plant mint in container with tree. Warning some mints can be invasive. Really pack the mint in and move tree where they can't jump on it from some where else. They would have to cross mint to get to trunk of tree.
I've been fighting a losing battle with rats here for quite some time.
I might try wrapping the bottom of the trunk in hardware cloth, and then try fashioning some kind of metal bell-shaped barrier right above it (like what people use to keep squirrels from climbing the bird feeder pole). I'm putting hardware cloth barriers all through the dirt floor of my chicken coop.
Meanwhile, I've resorted to poison outside. I want to make sure other animals won't access it, so I had to put it in a cage that only rodents can access, and it was never touched. Then I tried putting blocks of poison in the rat tunnels, and they still ignored it.
This winter, I had a rat tunnel through the snow bank that led to my chicken fence, which was a perfect inaccessible-to-other-animals place to put poison. I chopped the poison blocks into fine pieces and mixed it with peanut butter, and then molded the concoction around a stick, like a corn dog. I was able to slide the corn dog through the fence and into the tunnel, and it disappeared over night. I think they've gone through 4 corn dogs so far, and I still have rats, but I'm hopeful that it might help.
Good luck with your poor fig tree!