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Rats! Rats! Rats!

Druk said:
I actually like rats,rattus and norvegicus,outside penn station in NYC at midnight a few months back I stood watching quite a few coming out of the drain covers,I don’t feel freaked out by them at all.Years ago I went to Rajasthan solely to visit the Rat Temple in deshnoke.
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After my last post, I went down to do the washing up (late today) went to the back door to take some rubbish out, and Mr HanRATty was right in front of me.
I knew he was back as he's been digging again and MrsF saw him the other week.
 
Druk said:
No room for pity,I have stamped,squashed,shot and burned them into the next life,it was never personal :chuckle:
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I'm too much of a wimp for that.
Mind you, if I had an air rifle I think I would, as it would be a quick death at least (unlike the aforementioned drowning).
 
I have seen the gulls round here fly over with the odd rat but no were near that big.
 
Took this in London,crow eating a rat.
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Hmmm, maybe the cops are smoking it?

"The rats are eating our marijuana," New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said said at a city council meeting today. "They're all high."

Kirkpatrick was referring to the infestation of rodents at the deteriorating criminal justice building. She claims that the animals eat the dope in the department's evidence room and crap all over the officers' desks. Apparently, the rats vie for food with the cockroaches. Meanwhile, mold and broken HVAC, elevators, and plumbing add to the misery.

"It is not just at police headquarters," Kirckpatrick said. "It is all the districts. The uncleanliness is off the charts. The janitorial cleaning (team) deserves an award trying to clean what is uncleanable."

https://boingboing.net/2024/03/11/the-rats-are-all-high-says-new-orleans-police-chief.html
 
Although I'm happy to eat meat I do so hate killing off rats ad mice. Just despatched one today. It has to be done because they are so destructive and major germ spreaders. But I don't feel good about it. I think it is partly because they are so intelligent looking.

Inconsistent I know.
 
Cochise said:
Although I'm happy to eat meat I do so hate killing off rats ad mice. Just despatched one today. It has to be done because they are so destructive and major germ spreaders. But I don't feel good about it. I think it is partly because they are so intelligent looking.

Inconsistent I know.
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Yep, during lockdown we had a rodent invasion. I managed to evict a mouse humanely (by humanely, I mean catching a house mouse alive and releasing it into woodland at night, where it was probably eaten by an owl or a cat within the hour, but it made me feel better about it). Then the rats got in. Couldn't have that and I had to put down poison, which finished them off within a week, but I felt awful about it.
 
One of my dogs once caught, killed and swallowed whole a rat, right in front of me.
He slammed it on the ground until it stopped squealing before starting the anaconda impression.
I was horrified, yet also strangely proud. :thought:

It's only just occurred to me that the rat might've been slowed down enough to catch by being poisoned which wouldn't have done Rocky any good. He was OK though.
 
escargot said:
One of my dogs once caught, killed and swallowed whole a rat, right in front of me.
He slammed it on the ground until it stopped squealing before starting the anaconda impression.
I was horrified, yet also strangely proud. :thought:

It's only just occurred to me that the rat might've been slowed down enough to catch by being poisoned which wouldn't have done Rocky any good. He was OK though.
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Rat poison is slow acting, and depends on rats returning to continually eat more. If they start to feel ill when eating food (i.e. fast acting poison), they stop eating and will likely recover. If they don't associate their unwellness with the food, they'll keep coming back for more until it finishes them off - so just a single dose of poison from eating a single poisoned rat probably wouldn't do lasting damage.
 
We've got them again. I've carted off buckets and buckets of soil over the years, so heaven knows what the voids are like underground.
I'm expecting sinkholes to open up any day soon.

@Cochise I drowned one once (it was groggy from poison I think) and hated doing it.
 
This chap's obviously never had them infesting his home. As I say, I don't like killing them, and I think I've said elsewhere it will be either rats or cockroaches that will take over the planet after humans have immolated themselves. But really. Rats are simply not good neighbours and even worse house guests. I'd rather have grey squirrels.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environ...ats-london-new-york-paris-stowaway-joe-shute/
 
Eeeek!

A Canadian man found a rat in his toilet, and his month only got worse from there. In a recent case report, the man’s doctors described how he contracted an unusual and severe infection from being bitten by the rodent—one that ultimately sent him to the intensive care unit. Thankfully, he was successfully treated.

The case was detailed this January in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. According to the report, the 76-year-old Montreal resident went to a local emergency department with fever, headache, and abdominal pain that had been ongoing for three days. Almost three weeks earlier, he had the misfortune of encountering a rat in his toilet bowl. When he tried to remove the sewer animal, it bit two of his fingers. The man promptly visited the emergency department, where his wound was treated and he was given a tetanus booster. While the wound itself was healing fine by the time of his second ED visit, tests revealed he had developed sepsis—a type of systemic, life-threatening inflammation often caused by infection—and he was admitted to the hospital’s ICU. ...

https://gizmodo.com/man-bitten-toilet-rat-sepsis-infection-1851390962
 
Thing is, rats (like many other 'enemies') have a function in the ecosystem - they're clean-up crew. Extremely efficient too.
Decades ago I used to breed pet rats and learned a lot about them.
Since our idiot landlord shifted a huge paving slab, we got a rat 'run' next to an overgrown 'wilderness'. Only twice I saw a small brown go past the garden doors. It was in bright daylight and it was obviously a 'scout', looking for food sources. It found none (I made sure) but it did notice it had the attention of my cats and dogs!
Aint seen any since. Y'see, it saw 'the wilderness' as safer to scavenge.
 
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