Monday, 5 May 2014
Much Ado about Rats ......
My trip to the henhouse this morning was met with what I thought was another dead little rat (or big mouse) in the chook house......until he moved slightly when I tried to pick him up on the rake....I was suddenly mortified that the poor thing had been laying there slowly dying....I know all of the people out there who have been raised on farms etc. will think I am clueless and won't understand why I am upset over a dying rat.....but I had not thought about the suffering.... We have put bait stations in our back garage as the rodent population was making their presence felt ... I thought I was OK with this as I was told the rats go away to die...I didn't realise they would die slowly and painfully....this feels very inhumane and while other's will say that I am killing them any way what's the point...my problem is that seeing the rat motionless but alive was disturbing....so as usual I googled to find a more humane solution....I went here.....they suggest catch and release (which I have done in the house for mice) but we tried that without success in the garage...also tried the snap traps ...but I think we have clever rats as we never caught a single one....the bait has been very successful to date....but now I don't know... while searching for solutions I found a website that is dedicated to photos of rats cuddling things....people have rats as pets......it's a dilemma ....so I'm putting it out there....what does everyone else do?.
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Our farm cats help some, and we also use snap traps. We've used the catch and release traps, but at some point, after catching what seemed like dozens, we ran out of places we felt we could drop them off, and I realized I was probably just making them someone else's problem, which didn't seem fair. I think the glue traps are horrible. The snap traps seem the most humane to me, other than the catch and release traps, as they work quickly.
ReplyDeleteI can well understand you not wanting to have any small animal suffer. Happily, we don't have this problem in our city apartment but we have become friends with and peanut providers for a number of squirrels at the park.
ReplyDeleteI've read about two things that do deter rats and other small creatures - the first is peppermint oil. Apparently they hate the smell and will avoid places where the odour is noticeable. However that may not be practical for you depending on how large an area you need to protect. The other method that seems to work for many people is an ultrasonic pest repeller.
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