Getting rid of rats from your household!
The brown rat ( Rattus norvegicus ), sometimes called the Norway rat, is the commonest rat in the UK, and the one you are most likely to find dashing around your home or garden. Like mice, rats are ‘commensal’ rodents, which suggests they ‘share man’s table’ – a good description, as rats prosper in human environments.
As well as causing intensive damage to building substructure and contaminating food from piss and faeces, rats carry a horrifying number of sicknesses, including Lyme disease, Weil’s disease, toxoplasmosis, salmonellosis, Q fever and amoebic dysentery.
Numbers of brown rats are on the increase, especially in the inner towns, as littering, fly-tipping and fortnightly bin collections provide rats with bigger access to food waste. Also, with an increasing number of local authorities now charging for rodent control services, members of the general public are more likely to try to tackle rat problems themselves, usually by putting down over-the-counter rat poisons or setting traps.
Many don’t realise Nevertheless, that the first thing they should do is deal with the source of the rat problem by ensuring that food and remains are correctly cleared away, and that waste bins are rat evidence. Young rats can squeeze through holes as tiny as One cm in diameter, so any potential entry points should also be sealed.
Rats are neophobic, which means they are very wary of new things, so it may take some time for them to research traps or eat poisoned bait. Losing rats takes patience. There are a variety of traps on the market, starting from the standard snap trap, which kills the rat quickly, to humane traps which catch the rat alive.
Humane traps don’t harm the animal, but you are left with the difficulty of what to do with the rat once it’s been caught. If you’re unable to kill it humanely, you will need to release it at least Two miles from human habitation. It is unlawful to drown a trapped rat or treat it cruelly.
Traps have to be positioned in places of rat activity, ideally between the food source and nest. Fluorescent tracking dust, flour or talc can be splattered over areas of suspected rat activity, to confirm feeding routes. It is a great idea to place the traps without setting them, so that the rats become used to them. After one or two days, the traps can be set.
Although poisons ( rodenticides ) can be productive in losing rat infestations, they can take a while to work, and there is always the danger of the rat dying in a hard to reach place , for example under the floorboards. A roting rat is not pleasant to live with! Poisons also present a jeopardy to kids, household pets and non-target wildlife.
Once the infestation has been dealt with, householders need to ensure their home remains rat-free, by continuing to dam entry points, keeping the place tidy, storing food properly and removing food waste. Rats are drawn to compost cans and wild-bird feeding stations, so these have to be checked regularly and rat proofed too, if possible.
