Roof Rat behavior towards Rat Poison and Rat Traps

 

Mice tend to investigate new objects in their home range. Rats, especially Roof Rats, are suspicious of objects that suddenly appear in their midst. Roof Rats are Neo-Phobic (afraid of new things). Norway Rats and Roof Rats typically ignore Rat Poison and Rat Traps for 3-5 days or even weeks, especially if other food continues to be routinely available to them. Many Roof Rats will not consume a food source even when placed in its regularly traveled path unless it smells another rat’s breathe on the food source. Roof Rats are much more cautious than Norway Rats. Norway Rats seem to be as dumb as dirt and thus are much easier to entice to a Rat Trap or Rat Trap bait station. Norway Rats like to stay at ground level. They are low level rats. They mostly travel along the ground. Norway Rats follow regular paths next to walls. They do this for several reasons. First, Norway Rats and Roof Rats have very poor eye site they rely on their whiskers to feel their way along a wall. Secondly, Norway Rats and Roof Rats are incontinent - no bladder control. Norway Rats' and Roof Rats' running movements cause them to urinate in small amounts everywhere they go. An infant Roof Rat will die if its mother does not lick its belly. The licking motion on the belly is the only way a baby Roof Rat can pee. The urine constantly left by running rats leaves a scent trail that the rats follow. These scent trails can last for two years. The average Roof Rats and Norway Rat live for about one year. So, the scent trail left by a single rat will be followed by other rats, and other rats etc.

 

Roof Rats are accomplished climbers. Roof Rats prefer to live in trees or attics where it is safe. Roof Rats are incredibly cautious and intelligent and thus hard to entice to rat poison or a rat trap. Roof Rats are cannibalistic.  A roof Rat will eat another dead Roof Rat. This cannibalistic behavior is one reason why Roof Rats are becoming immune to rat poisons, because at times a dead rat will have died from eating a poison and the secondary poisoning that occurs to the cannibalistic rats will not be enough to kill them but instead helps them develop a resistance to the poisons which is passed down to their offspring.

 

A Roof Rat’s favorite food is dog manure.

 

Dog droppings are a gourmet meal for a Roof Rat. A roof rat will pass by a food source for several days without eating it - unless it smells another roof rat's breath on the food. One of the odors given off by dog manure is the same as in a roof rat's breath. The Roof Rat smells this and knows the dog droppings are safe to eat. If you or your neighbor(s) have dogs you could have a nasty Roof Rat problem in no time. And Roof Rats smell bad – no wonder!

 

 

 

 

Get Rid of the dog manure in your neighborhood and you move a step closer to getting rid of the roof rats in your attic.

Do not just get your neighbors together to gather up all the oranges off the trees but also gather up your neighborhood's dog manure. This will eliminate another roof rat food source - a nutrient rich, moisture filled roof rat safe food source. You will be a step closer to achieving long term roof rat control.

 

 

 

 

A mouse may accept a new food source more readily; but a mouse’s smaller home range means that a rat poison or a mouse trap has to be located very near its nesting site.

 

Roof Rats have poor eyesight, but they have keen senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Roof Rats, Norway Rats and Mice are mostly active at night.Rats, especially Roof Rats, explore and learn about their environment, memorizing all the elements of their domain. They quickly detect and avoid anything new. This behavior is very pronounced in Roof Rats. This was dramatically demonstrated in one experiment. In this experiment there were two rooms separated by a common wall. In the wall there was a hole through which the Roof Rat could pass. One room was the harborage (safe place) room for the rat. The harborage room was kept dark and had no food or water source. The other room was outfitted with furniture, lighting and a food and water source on the far side of the room from the access hole. The Roof Rat would routinely leave the harborage room at regular times, run along the floor always keeping next to the wall and eat and drink and then leave via its routine wall hugging path. The experimenters then re-arranged some of the furniture. The next time the rat returned it came through the hole, looked around and noticed things had been changed and immediately stopped and returned to the harborage room. The rat would regularly look through the hole but did not re-enter the room to go to its only source of food and water until three full days had passed since the furniture had been rearranged.

 

In a field experiment, described to me by the Vertebrate Pest Specialist who does the pest control device claim inspections for the Federal Trade Commission, a Roof Rat was observed for several days. The setting was a yard with a wooden fence. Inside the fence was a home with a porch and a dog with its food and water bowls. There was also a Roof Rat. The Roof Rat shared the dog's rations. The Roof Rat would appear from it hiding place about the same time every night (the dog's bedtime). The Roof Rat world then sit on the fence and observer the dog falling asleep and then sleeping. The pest specialist were  intrigued that the Roof Rat would patiently wait for a long while after the dog had fallen asleep. Why didn't the Roof rat go eat out of the bowl. The dog was fast asleep. The pest specialist told me that they observed the dog more carefully and noticed that as soon as the dog displayed the physical signs that it was in REM sleep ( the deepest dream stage of sleep) the Roof Rat went down and ate and drank out of the dog's bowl. That's careful. That's smart!

 

The metropolitan area of Phoenix has a serious Roof Rat problem. Several years ago the government placed 6,000 Rat Poison bait stations in infested areas in order to curb the Roof Rat problem. The local government left the bait stations out for one month and then checked the rat poison bait stations and found that only 1% of the rat poison had been touched by the rat population.

 

Rat Poison - Some Things You Need to Consider:

If you use a rat poison to poison a roof rat, besides the risk of it or its young dying in your attic or home's wall, is the risk of a sickened or dead family pet.

 

Every year there a hundreds of cases of secondary poisonings from a dog or cat chewing on or partially ingesting poisoned roof rat. If a dog or cat finds a dead roof rat - and they can smell them out, they find what to them is a chew toy and/or an extra meal. As they carry around the dead roof rat in their mouths, as some kind of trophy, they are ingesting the very poisons that killed the rat. At least, your pet could get sick and sometimes they die. This death will occur some times because there is often, over time, more than one dead rat or squirrel that they find and the poisons accumulate in the pet's blood stream until it becomes sick and dies, or at least runs up a considerable veterinary bill.

With the Rodent Strobe line of pest control strobe lights these problems are addressed. First, we have found that if a squirrel or rat is living in a house wall that it accesses through a space that is protected by a high intensity strobe that the squirrel or rat will give up going to its nesting area in the wall. It just is not worth it - see Rodent Strobe's How It Works page.

 

Second, Roof Rats are good mothers. If their young are in what the rodent mother deems an "unsafe" area she will move them to another place that she sees as safe. We recommend that a person using pest control strobe lights simply turn off the strobes for a few hours at a time during the first few days to allow the mothers to move their young. Then when all the attic squirrels, attic rats, raccoons, etc., are gone - turn on the strobes and leave them on. Problem solved! No dead, rotting poisoned roof rats. No dead or sick family pets. No repeating and repeating the roof rat trapping nightmare.

 

Rat Control and Disease

 

Rodents can carry infectious diseases. The roof rat, also known as the black rat and the ship rat, spread bubonic plague through Asia and Europe hundreds of years ago. As much as 50 percent of the populations died. Most rodents are resistant to the effects of the bacteria that cause plague. They become infected and carry the disease as host. On a visit to the Grand Canyon years ago, the group I was with was told by our guide not to feed the ground squirrels because if you were bitten you would be taken to the hospital and treated for rabies and bubonic plague.

 

In northern Arizona, California, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico plague, aka “the black death”, has been found in the rodent population. In the Phoenix, Arizona area the local prisoners have been put to work making bait stations for the roof rat problem. This makes me wonder if the Phoenix area health authorities are worried about the roof rats of Arizona becoming infected with bubonic plague. If this occurs, via fleas, the plague could quickly be spread to pets (dogs and cats are also resistant carriers) and then humans in rapid succession.

 

 

SQUIRREL FACTS:

Grey Squirrels

 

 

The Eastern Grey Squirrel: The Eastern Grey Squirrel's Scientific name is Sciurus Carolinensis. The First part of this name is the Latin word for squirrel. The name Sciurus (Squirrel) is derived from the combination of two Greek words. Skia "shadow" and Oura, "tail" - thus Sciurus (squirrel) means "shadow tail" because squirrels use their tails as shade and an umbrella. The word Carolinensis is the Latinized word which means "of Carolina". Carolina is the place where the first grey squirrels were first collected and described. "Eastern" denotes the regions in the United States in which this squirrel was originally found. The name "Grey" is derived from its greyish appearance. The word Squirrel comes from two French words "esquireul and escuriuel.

Identifying the Eastern Grey Squirrel:

The Eastern Grey Squirrel is a medium-sized tree squirrel which prefers to nest in trees or attics. The Eastern Grey Squirrel is distinguished from the Fox Squirrel by its grayer back and it white belly area. The Eastern Grey Squirrel is smaller than the Fox Squirrel. The Eastern Grey Squirrel has a more slender face profile, white edging of its tail and 2 more additional upper cheek teeth than is cousin the Fox Squirrel.

The General upper coloring of the grey squirrel is gray. The males and females are the same shade of gray but the younger squirrels tend to be grayer than the adults.. In winter they grey squirrel has a silver tone to its fur which is also longer and fuller. The winter grey squirrels also have a projecting fringe of white fur from their ears. The grey squirrels have a coloring of yellowish brown mingle among the predominate grey on their head, sides, mid-back and upper areas of their feet. The Grey Squirrels have a white area on the back of their ears and a whitish ring around their eyes. They outside parts of their limbs and feet are mostly grey while he chin and belly are whitish. The grey squirrels tail hairs are stripped/banded tan and black with wide whitish tops. In summer the body fur is short but the tail fur is long. Occasionally their are black grey squirrels. The black coloration is more of a glossy black than a flat black. Red colored grey squirrels are very rare. Grey squirrels can also be born as albinos. In areas where this genetic characteristic is more common small colonies of albino grey squirrels might be formed. Grey squirrels shed their fur twice a year - in the fall and spring. These squirrels shed from the head first to their tail last.

The sexes are are identified by by common genital characteristic. As is common among male rodents grey squirrel males' testes, through the duration of the mating season, descend into a temporary scrotum. Male also have a penis bone. The females have eight teats. The population ratio is is slightly higher for the male squirrels by as much as ten percent.

The determination of the age of a grey squirrel is determined by its sexual organs the bones of its wrist joint. Grey Squirrels are believed to live as long as 6-10 years in the wild and up to 15 years in captivity.

The grey squirrel does not have anal musk glands. Its scent is mostly left via urine and the sweat gland located in its feet.

By comparison to most mammals grey squirrels make a lot of noise via their large squirrel vocabulary. A grey squirrel calling out a rapidly repeated ""cherk, cherk, cherk"  is calling out a warning or some other state of excitement to is neighboring squirrels. A contented and happy grey squirrel will make a "quack - quack - quack - quaaaa" vocalization. Emotions of resentment or affection are communicated among grey squirrels by varying nasal and throat base grunts, purring and chattering of teeth. I have heard squirrels and roof rats give very similar distress calls when first returning to an attic in which my strobe lights have been installed. I have heard this high pitched chirping sounds as they run from attic area to attic area in search of a place not covered by the strobe lights. I have then heard the same distress calls as they will hide in these areas unwilling to pass back through the strobe light covered attic areas to get out of the attic. In these cases the rodents simply force themselves to run past the strobes  (as they make the loud distress calls) in order to exit the attic - or I have turned off the strobes for short periods in order to allow the attic rat or attic squirrel enough time to remove themselves and their baby rats or squirrels. Then I have turn back on the strobes - no more squirrels in attic or rats in attic.

The distribution of the grey squirrel through-out the United States is roughly to the East of  the center of Oklahoma if a north to south line is imagined across the North American Continent.

The average squirrel lives for 3-5 years. Grey squirrels mate twice a year - in the early spring or late winter and in the summer. Adult female squirrels have two litters a year with 1-6 infants per litter. The mother squirrel will give birth to her young about 45 days after mating. A typical litter has 4 to 6 baby squirrels. The squirrel offspring are called "kittens". Baby squirrels are hairless when born and are blind for the first 10 weeks of their lives. Each litter does not leave its mother's nest for the first 10 to 12 weeks of its life. It is totally dependant on its mother's milk to live. A pair of healthy squirrels could produce a dozen offspring each year. In twelve months the offspring become breeding adults. If you have squirrels in the attic there most likely are baby squirrels in your attic 40% of the year. Squirrel trapping or poisoning could leave baby squirrels up in your attic in a nesting site to die of starvation. A mother squirrel will nest in the safest place she can find to protect her young. A squirrel nest is called a "drey". A mother squirrel will construct a nest with up to two rooms and a nursery. Attics are ideal places for a mother squirrel to build a nest. The cavities in the your home's walls are many times chosen by nesting squirrels - the radiant heat in the winter and the cool air from air conditioning make the interior house walls good nesting sites for mother squirrels. These cavities are accessed by the squirrel through top of the wall openings in your attic. If you use rat poison or a squirrel trap to try to get rid of squirrels in the attic, then you could be smelling dead, baby squirrels rotting in your attic or walls for weeks. And if you use a rat poison to kill the squirrels, the squirrel will often retreat to its nest in your attic to die and you will be smelling its rotting body for weeks. Often interior walls have to be cut into to remove the dead squirrels. An attic squirrel may nest under attic flooring and the flooring will have to be removed to remove the dead squirrel in the attic. AND PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT, IF YOU HEAR SQUIRRELS IN YOUR ATTIC THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, YOU MOST LIKELY HAVE 4 TO 6 BABIES PER EACH MOTHER SQUIRREL IN THE ATTIC 40-50% OF THE YEAR. A MOTHER SQUIRREL IN A SQUIRREL TRAP, WHETHER CAUGHT IN A SNAP TYPE SQUIRREL TRAP OR A LIVE SQUIRREL TRAP AND CARRIED AWAY - OR - A POISONED MOTHER SQUIRREL - OR - A MOTHER SQUIRREL SHOT WITH A PELLET GUN COULD RESULT IN DEAD YOUNG SQUIRRELS IN YOUR ATTIC OR INTERIOR HOUSE WALLS LEFT TO DECAY AND SMELL.

 

Squirrels’ teeth are continually growing. Squirrels have 22 teeth. They gnaw and chew on just about anything. They even grind their teeth in their sleep. City officials of New York City attribute at least one power outage each day to squirrels. Squirrels actually cause more power outages than lightning in some states. In Georgia in 2006 there were 16,750 power outages caused by squirrels. Not all of these outages were caused by the squirrels’ chewing on the wires – some were just contact electrocutions but many were via contact with the metal wire after the squirrel chewed through the soft plastic wire jacket covering and the squirrel was electrocuted.

 

Squirrels like to chew on wiring in particular. They do not chew on the wiring to sharpen their teeth. They chew on wiring to clean their teeth. Squirrels are the cleanest of the rodent family. A male grey squirrel will groom itself twice as much as a female squirrel. Squirrels use the bark of trees to keep their teeth clean. Squirrels use a back and forth motion when chewing on the tree bark. This serves as a sort of squirrel dental floss. And squirrels floss very regularly. The soft plastic outer jacket on home wiring is a perfect teeth cleaning material for a squirrel in the attic. Every attic with squirrels I have inspected has had wire damage. Every single one has had wires that an attic squirrel has chewed through to the copper wire center. If a squirrel in the attic chews through the wire outer jacket and exposes both the positive and the negative copper wires then the squirrel in the attic becomes a dead squirrel in the attic by means of electrocution. A squirrel in the attic that makes "contact" while chewing on attic wiring will often catch on fire as the electric currents cook the squirrel. Also, the "contact" made by a squirrel in the attic chewing on wiring can cause an electrical "short" in the wiring. An eclectic short caused by a squirrel in the attic or other wire chewing rodent in an attic causes an estimated 15,000 residential fires per year in the US.

 

Squirrel Control - How to get rid of squirrels in the attic without additional problems.

 

How to get rid of squirrels in the attic? - House sealing, squirrel trapping and removal, live traps, animal removal, squirrel removal, squirrel traps, rat traps, mice traps - what’s best?

 

Using Rat Traps as Squirrel Traps to get rid of attic squirrels:

Rat traps are designed for rats - not for squirrels! I am speaking of the snap trap variety of rat traps. I have seen a squirrel that was trapped in one of these rat traps and it did not kill the squirrel. The rat trap used as a squirrel trap was placed in an attic by a well meaning husband trying to get rid of his squirrels in the attic. He had placed about a dozen rat traps in a 2,000 square foot attic space. The traps had been up in the attic for seven years! A squirrel ran past one and tripped the rat trap trigger.  The rat trap snapped shut on the attic squirrel's foot. Where do you think this injured squirrel with a rat trap attached to its broke leg ran to? It ran to a interior house wall where its nest was. There's no place like home. The squirrel managed to force its broken leg through the wall opening in the attic with the rat trap still attached. But as it tried to leave the interior wall space to go back up into the attic the rat trap used as a squirrel trap became stuck and so was the injured squirrel. Unfortunately the squirrel had to be put down.

If you use a rat trap as a squirrel trap the squirrel will usually not face an immediate death being as the rat traps are not designed to be used as a squirrel trap. The squirrel will definitely suffer and if it is able to move it will often retreat to its squirrel nest in your attic to die and rot and smell.

 

Squirrel Poison:

 

If you use a squirrel poison to get rid of attic squirrels, besides the risk of it or its young dying in your attic or home's wall, is the risk of a sickened or dead family pet.

 

Every year there a hundreds of cases of secondary poisonings from a dog or cat chewing on or partially ingesting poisoned rat, mouse or squirrel. If a dog or cat finds a dead rodent - and they can smell them out, they find what to them is a chew toy and/or an extra meal. As they carry around the dead rodent in their mouths, as some kind of trophy, they are ingesting the very poisons that killed the rat. At least, your pet could get sick and sometimes they die. This death will occur some times because there is often, over time, more than one dead rat or squirrel that they find and the poisons accumulate in the pet's blood stream until it becomes sick and dies, or at least runs up a considerable veterinary bill.

 

With the Rodent Strobe line of pest control strobe lights these problems are addressed. First, we have found that if a squirrel or rat is living in a house wall that it accesses through a space that is protected by a high intensity strobe that the squirrel or rat will give up going to its nesting area in the wall. It just is not worth it - see Rodent Strobe's How It Works page.

Second, Attic squirrels and rats are good mothers. If their young are in what the rodent mother deems an "unsafe" area she will move them to another place that she sees as safe. We recommend that a person using our pest control strobe lights simply turn off the strobes for a few hours at a time during the first few days to allow the mothers to move their young. Then when all the attic squirrels, attic rats, raccoons, etc., are gone - turn on the strobes and leave them on. Problem solved! No dead, rotting squirrels or rats. No dead or sick family pets. No repeating and repeating the squirrel trapping, or rat trapping nightmare.

 

 

Squirrels will migrate – in mass. In 1791 in Ohio the squirrel population exploded and squirrels in mass migrated to the town of Belpre and consumed the entire area’s corn crop. They then in mass swam across the Ohio River into West Virginia and began devouring the corn crops there.

 

Squirrels are solitary creatures. Each squirrel usually lives alone in its nest. In the cold winter they will share a nesting area to keep warmer. Squirrels usually cluster in loose groups up to about twelve. So, if you hear squirrels in your attic you may have a migrating population that will stay in numbers of one to a full dozen in your attic. An acre of area may contain multiple groups of squirrels. If you get rid of some – well, if you’ve built it they will come.

 

There are about three hundred varieties of squirrels.

A squirrel has a brain about the size of a walnut.

Squirrels communicate with each other through different chirps.

Squirrels can run fast. Squirrels can run up to a speed of about twenty miles per hour.

Squirrels eat up to 2 pounds of food each week. A squirrel's diet consists of nuts, acorns, bird seed, bird eggs, mushrooms, corn, wheat, insects, garbage, and berries. Squirrels scent mark their food before they hide it for the winter.

Squirrels have double-jointed hind legs. This aids squirrels in their ability to run up and down trees quickly.

A squirrel can fall up to 100 feet without injury.

Squirrels have 4 toes on their front feet. The nails on their front feet are very sharp which helps them hold onto surfaces they are climbing.

Squirrels have 5 toes on their back feet.

The Eastern Grey Squirrel can also be found in Western states as well as in Ireland, England and South Africa.

The name "Squirrel" comes from a Greek word meaning "shadow tail".

A male squirrel can "scent" a female squirrel in heat a mile away.

Squirrels can jump a distance of approximately 20 feet.

Squirrels are found on almost every continent.

Squirrels have eyes on the sides of their head which allows them to see behind themselves.

Squirrel predators include snakes, cats, owls, hawks, foxes, bobcats and raccoons to name a few.

A Squirrel will clean a nut before burying it. The squirrel will first crack the nut open with its sharp teeth. The squirrel will then lick the nut clean. The squirrel will also rub the nut on its face to clean the nut. Both the licking and the rubbing of a nut by a squirrel will mark the nut with the squirrel's scent and make the nut easier to find after it is buried. The squirrel can find the nut even under a foot of snow. If you have squirrels in the attic they will also hide nuts in the attic. I have been in a attic where multiple squirrels lived and it was littered with peanuts and peanut shells that a neighbor threw out in his yard to feed the squirrels. The squirrels in the attic had done extensive wire damage - with multiple chewed through and copper exposed wire. Attic squirrels may be cute in the yard but they are a fire hazard in an attic. This is why it is so important to get rid of squirrels in the attic.

When a squirrel senses danger its first instinct is to stand perfectly still. I remember a particular squirrel in an attic that upon seeing me "froze" and stood still for a minute or two looking straight at me without so much as a twitch. The squirrel in the attic did not run away until I moved towards the "frozen" squirrel.

A squirrel's meandering path while crossing a road is its way of confusing an on-coming car. This very squirrel behavior causes the death of thousands of squirrels each year as this squirrel behavior causes them to run right back in front of the car they are attempting to evade. Many a homeowner has had to call a pest control professional to "fish out" dead baby squirrels in the attic - squirrels that have been orphaned by a neighbor's car.

When a squirrel's nest becomes infested with parasites and fleas it will move to a different nest.