Poisoned Rats
What happens to rats once poisoned?
Poisoned Rats can cause many different problems for you. Far from being the very best result, they can be the source of an astonishing bloom of flies, a horrendous stench and encourage other pests into your home.
Don’t worry because it’s not all bad news. Sometimes the outcome of poisoning can be positive and tell us more about the rats than you might think.
Why Do We Need To Control Rats?
Rats and other rodents carry disease, cause damage to physical structures and may have an adverse effect on wildlife. So you have three major reasons to control them, but how?
Diseases carried by rats can be medically important to humans, but the infective transmission of pathogenic (disease causing) microorganisms (fungi, bacteria, viruses) is not very common. In the ten years, our business has been running, none of our team has been affected, and we deal with rats every day.
Damage caused by rats includes damage to electrical wires, timbers, plastic pipes and cables for fire and security systems.
The reason rats bite through so many things has nothing to do with hunger, but everything to do with habit. They need to gnaw (bite, chew) on things, so their incisors (the big teeth at the front of the mouth) don’t grow too large and prevent them feeding!
Rats outcompete almost every other rodent and small animal in their environment. Steeling eggs from birds, eating other small rodents and consuming food meant for other animals is an everyday part of a rat’s life.
How Are Rats Controlled?
Common Control Methods (professional and amateur)
Most poisons are anticoagulant in action, meaning that the affected rodents will crave water as their circulating fluid volume begins to fall.
They have an urge to drink, and they need a water source. The water needed often comes from badly maintained and blocked guttering, leaking pipework, leaky taps, kitchen sinks, toilets or your pets water bowls.
The Main Methods of Rat Control Are:
1. Trap and Kill (trap and release is illegal in the UK)
2. Chemical Control – Poisons – agents that when consumed in such quantity, destroy life.
3. Get a Cat or Dog (some cats and dogs are rubbish at hunting!)
4. Proofing and maintenance – Prevent access to areas and resources.
Whatever the method of control, the result is often the same – dead rodents.
What Happens When You Trap & Poison Rats
1. Rats might die in the gutter – decaying bodies full of maggots block gutters. We see this every spring, resulting in reports of maggots falling from the sky. Very unpleasant, surprisingly common!
2. Poisoned rats could die in the loft or wall cavities. Result = the immediate area will stink of death until the body is retrieved or fly larvae get the chance to consume it. After a couple of weeks, a swarm of flies will temporarily appear and disappear. That’s when the moths and beetles move in to deal with the skin and fur.
3. Neighbours get the stink and flies. They go next door to die – very common. Properties that are part of a terrace or are semi-detached will usually share rodent problems. Neighbours rarely tell you the truth about activity, fearing financial consequences.
4. Poisoned Rats die under a floor void. People quickly regret having laminate flooring and too much furniture. The smell can make the main living areas unlivable until the body is retrieved or the smell has gone. Lifting or cutting inspection points into floors is often the only way to retrieve dead rodents.
5. Sewers – with 80-90% of rodent problems coming from the drains, it may come as no surprise that dying rats would go back there.
6. They escape outdoors – If you have a hole in the outer structure, rats will leave the property where they came in.
7. The rats have nested – the juvenile young in the nest will die causing a terrible smell.
8. Rats in homes often try to get water from toilets, where the lid has been left up. The rat will be found alive or dead in the toilet.
9. Traps not secured with screws or wire will be dragged off by dying rats and squirrels. Trapped animals can clank around for days before dying from their injuries or dehydration.
10. Glue boards – often require humane dispatch by hand. The rodents take 6 to 12 hours to die from a mixture of stress, exhaustion and dehydration.
In warm weather, the carcas will be full of maggots within 72 hours. In cold weather, very few flying insects will be active enough to deal with the rodent, so in the winter months, the smell can last for many weeks.
Bristol Pest Control – WaspKill UK – Learn more about rats, mice and squirrels with Simon Berenyi
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