Rats, ways of possibly getting rid of them
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
In spite of all those entries about the intelligence, beauty and doubtlessly great inner values of rats, I would like to use this opportunity to give some advice as to how to get rid of them inside a house. I should add that I do actually like rats, but, as, most of you will agree, charming as they are, you would not want to have them in certain places (especially if you can't be sure about other places frequented by the same specimens). The following remarks are what just comes to my mind after having spent several years in a reasonably old house, close to a river and without a properly floored cellar. At this point you won't be surprised to learn that the house was a home not only to about ten humans living on its four floors but also to, presumably, a hundred rats. Before you go on reading, I should add, that in spite I consider myself some kind of an expert on this topic I have not managed to free the house from its furry inhabitants. As a consequence, some of you might take the following advices as suggestions on how NOT to take up the fight against rats, but, still, I am quite convinced of the successfulness and intrinsic truth of at least a few of the points following.
I First Steps
Before getting rid of rats you should get rid of a few prejudices; the following are just the ones I heard most frequently. Unnecessary to say that they all turned out to be wrong:
1. "Rats observe their fellow-rats fate. They won't step into a trap another rat has already taken its last breath in."
Not really true. In our house we had a spring trap which turned out to be the deathbed of a dozen rats in just a bit more than a week. After that span of time and loss of life, however, our friends got it and decided to avoid the trap.
2. "Rats do not climb up to upper floors."
Just wrong. They do.
3. "Rats usually enter a flat by coming up through the toilet bowl."
Very unlikely. In most modern toilets this is avoided by some kind of trap door opening only in the flushing direction. So things can go down (as they should) but normally not come up through that way.
4. "Local councils pay a reward for every rat killed within their area. It is paid by tail, so you will want to cut the tails of your victims and bring them to the city hall."
This actually used to be the practice in some places in southern Germany, so I was told, but, alas, it is not done anymore nowadays.
II Basic facts about rats
The following are just a few basics you should or might want to know about rats in your house.
1. The classic black-furred rat with a pinkish, naked tail, knwon as ordinary house rat (Hausratte, rattus rattus) in today's Europe is almost extinct. Instead, in 99% of the cases, if you happen to have rats in your house, they will belong to the species of the 'wandering rat' (Wanderratte, rattus norvegicus), which is more pleasing in outward appearance, as these 'Norwegian rats' have a lightish coffee-brown fur, are white on the belly and have a brownish, slightly furry tail.
2. The presence of rats is usually detected by their faeces, their excrements. If you find faeces which look somhow like black rice corns, you don't have rats but mice. Rats' s**t is much bigger, measuring about 1cm in length an 0,3-0,5cm in diameter, can vary in colour and smell and is more round at one and more pointed at the other end.
III Fighting Rats - here's the main bit!
1. Always think of the implausible. Apparently, rats' mindsets work along different ways, which enables them to do just what we would never come up with. I spent about a day searching a flat for a hole, which chould had served as an entrance to a rat, until I discovered it had literally bitten its way through the floor, i.e. vertically through 2 inch of solid oak wood. In other places rats have been reported to climb up rain tubes etc. There simply are very few things they definitely can't do.
2. Consider whether it is worthwhile to take up the fight with a large rat community. After killing quite a few of them in our (rarely used)cellar, I discovered they had transferred most of their activity into the staircase, the surroundings of the garbage containers and the bicycle shed - places, I certainly did not intend to drive them to.
3. Avoid direct confrontation. When attacked, rats can actually decide to defend themselves by biting - harmful and dangerous given the diseases they transmit.
4. The best way to temporarily clear a place of rats, e.g. a shed you would like to clean up, is making noise. We made good experiences with British punk rock played on a cassette player at maximum volume, but I fancy, Wagner might do an equally good job. If you like to spend money, you can go and buy one of these thingies emitting high-pitched sounds, apparently unbearable to them, though an expert told me he had seen (deaf?) rats acting as if nothing was, although he went on giving them what were expected to be deadly ultra-high sound blows.
5. Finally, the trap. After different experiments, we found out that the classic spring trap still works best. Poison is always a bit of a random thing and you can't really know if it worked. One further advantage of the trap is that you can dispose of the corpse; the smell of a poisoned rat decomposing is worse than what a dozen rats can do in a lifetime. If you happen to be a great rattophile, go and use those life traps, where our friends are supposed to get caught alive without actually being hit, but usually the rats distrust them much more than any other trap, and they will learn much faster about its danger. The spring trap can be found in a lot of varieties, some of them offering slight improvements on the basic type. Most important is the size. Do not underestimate power and size of your rats! Just in order to be sure the rat is actually killed, the trap's platform should measure at least 7cm x 13cm. A pencil hit by the metal axis should break. Don't set the trap in a way that it goes off very easily, they might let it off and then enjoy the food. Right, the food. Lots of experiments have been carried out on the proper way to attract them to the trap. What is sure, is that smell is the most important factor here. Cheese indeed does fine, especially if it is smelly. Moist bread is reputed to work well, although I always considered this below my culinary standards. I had the best results with a lightly salted mix made from a very liquid cheese, mild liver paté and goose fat, but I am curious to know about other recipes.
6. One final thing: the corpse. In Germany the veterinary stations offer a special service (usually for pets) and come to your house taking the corpse with them. They do, however, charge you on every corpse they take. The most reasonable thing to my opinion is to throw the corpse into the garbage container inside a plastic bag. Avoid throwing the corpse into publicly accessible litter boxes, since these often get searched by beggars etc. and you don't want anybody to touch a dead rat unprotected.
