Rats! August 16, 2006
Posted by Niels in : How to, Personal , trackbackI found rat droppings on my floor this morning.  For most people, this would be very upsetting. But my apartment in Berkeley had rats for a little while, so I’m a seasoned pro.
It’s not easy to get rid of rats. Let’s consider the options:
- Snap traps. The classic trap, cheap and disposable. No one’s built a better mousetrap. But mice are little. Rats are big, and snap traps don’t always work. So you wake up in the morning to find a maimed rat dragging a bloody trap all over your nice clean floor. The traps themselves say to tie them down with a bit of wire. Not something I wanted to deal with.
- Glue traps. These are sick. Our landlord hired an exterminator, and this was what he brought. I went around after he left and threw them all away. Glue traps are just inhumane. With glue traps you wake up in the morning to find a rat covered in glue, ripping its hair out and half suffocated. You can close your eyes and throw it away live as the traps suggest, drop it in a bucket of water, or whack it with a shovel. Again, not for me.
- Poison. Yeah, the rats die. In your walls. And then they stink. And what if your neighbor’s cat eats the carcass?
- Live traps. Checking the trap four times a day and borrowing a car to chauffeur a rat each morning deep into the Berkeley hills wasn’t something I was willing to do.
After doing the research, I was just about ready to give up. There didn’t seem to be any good way to kill a rat. But then I discovered electronic rat traps. These are amazing! You put them on the ground, throw some rice inside, and flip a switch. When a rat wanders in, it gets hit with 12,000 volts of electricity. For a full minute. (Yeah, yeah, I know - It’s the volts what jolts, but it’s the mills what kills.)
Of course, you don’t see this. You just come down in the morning, see a little blinking LED, close your eyes and shake the trap into a paper bag which you throw in your trash can outside. Flip the switch and you’re ready to go again! There’s a few varieties, from the classic Rat Zapper 2000 to the Victor brand trap. The Rat Zapper can even be wirelessly networked. Electrical engineers - making the world a better place. Unless you’re a rat. Or a mouse. (Or, according to the Rat Zapper, a ground squirrel.)
I was zapping a rat or two a day for a little while. Electronic rat traps rock my world!
Some parting tips: Rats are incredibly smart and cautious. It’s crucial that you leave the trap off but baited for several days until the rats take the food every night. Then arm the trap and wait for morning. It also helps to put a damp paper towel outside the front entrance of the trap to get the rat’s feet wet.
Comments»
I had mice in a house I lived in my senior year of college. The maintenance guy gave us glue traps. After our first experience of having to deal with a squeaking brown mouse nearly ripping his leg off to get free (we ended up putting him in a box outside to freeze to death), we tried live traps called the Mice Cube. They were extremely ineffective, unfortunately. We never found a good solution to our mouse problem, and I haven’t had any mice in any of the other places I’ve lived. But if they appear, I’ll keep the Rat Zapper in mind, because I doubt my cats will do anything about mice.
HI,
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING AND HAD SOME CEREAL AND AS I WAS FINISHING IT AND WAS DRINKING THE LEFT OVER MILK I DISCOVERED A RAT DROPPING IN MY BOWL!!
I FREAKED OUT AND I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO….WILL IT KILL ME??
I DONT KNOW IF THERE WERE OTHER RAT DROPPINGS THAT I ATE…BUT I DIDNT EAT THE ONE I FOUND….WILL I BE OK??
IM CRYING HYSTERICALLY…