Humane Rat Trap: Humane Options to Get Rid of Rats in Your Home
The presence of rats in your home may wreak havoc not only on your property but even on everyone’s health including your pets. There are a lot of ways to get rid of rats. Some are powerful and efficient in killing them but are still potentially dangerous and inhumane. There are humane rat traps and there are also ways in addressing the main cause of the infestation.
Common Issues with the Presence of Rats
Before going through different options for humane traps, you might want to consider why these rats are attracted to your home and the threats that come with their presence. This will also help you understand why you should learn how to repel rodents in general. Below are the reasons why you should get rid of them aside from the main reason that their presence is a sign of an unhygienic environment:
Burrows
Rats are known for burrowing. Yes, this creates damage, but it is more superficial than structural.
Chewing
Their front teeth are known to grow throughout their lives. They tend to chew on anything to wear their teeth out. This is dangerous to homes as they may target to gnaw any electrical wiring near them.
Food
Rats tend to eat anything that a human may also eat. Sometimes, they eat pet food and more. But the worse problem that they could cause is the spread of their feces and urine. These may result in health problems when you consume uneaten food that may have gotten into contact with their droppings.
Public Health
Their presence can cause damage to public health as they are known to carry many diseases. Not getting rid of them may pose risks to the health of everyone that may get access to infested areas.
With all these in mind, you must act fast when you see more than one mouse, rat, or rodent lurking around your property.
Why Trapping and Poisoning are Not Enough
Trapping may not be the sole solution to address your rat problem. One of the best ways to control the presence of rats, mice, and other rodents is to discourage them from residing in your home.
An infestation tends to get worse because pests are usually left in conditions that support their survival and reproduction. By then, the most common solutions used are poisoning and trapping mice and rats. These poisons and traps may help decrease the population but are not enough and may leave the main cause of the rat problem unaddressed.
What you should do is focus on exerting effort to limit rat populations. You need to focus on exclusion and sanitation. Doing these will prevent reinfestation from happening again.
Things to Do to Prevent Rat Infestations in Your Home
There are different ways how you can prevent these pests from getting into your home and starting an infestation. These are the following:
The first thing is getting rid of their access to your home. Seal holes and other entry points that these small animals may access. Make sure to use heavy-weight materials to seal these areas.
Use scouring pads, copper mesh, or steel wool in plugging gaps in floors and walls.
Finish sealing any openings where these pests can use access to your home with foam insulation or caulking. Since they can gnaw through this layer, you can add wire mesh to secure the area.
Less Humane Ways of Controlling Rat Infestation
There are less humane ways of controlling rat infestations. These methods include the use of glue traps, poisons, snap traps and maze-type traps that eventually drown them. The killing method on traditional traps like snap traps is considered less inhumane since they kill instantly. Though less humane mouse traps work, the rest like the use of a glue trap tend to make the pests suffer before dying.
Humane Ways to Kill Lurking Mouse or Rat in Your Home
If there are inhumane ways to kill these pests in your home, there are also other humane ways that will leave you a little less guilty when eliminating them.
Get a Cat
Many consider that getting cats is a humane way of catching and disposing of pests since it is a natural cycle in their food chain. However, many still believe that it is not the fail-safe and quick-kill solution that you might expect.
Most house cats are not into hunting and catching mice and other pests since they are fed in the comforts of your home. Also, this can still be a gruesome sight if your cat does catch and kill these pests.
You must also consider your cat’s safety. They may get poisoned if they catch rats that consume poison from nearby houses. Plus, these pests carry serious diseases that may also affect the overall health of your pets.
Catch and Release Traps
These traps include live cage box traps where mice and other animals are trapped alive. These traps work by adding bait or any food item with a strong smell to lure the rodent into it and as soon as the mechanism is triggered, the trap door will close immediately. You can release the animal in a far wooded area away from your home.