For a lot of people, rats and mice are interchangeable. After all, they’re both rodents that look similar, like to infest houses, and they often cause a lot of the same problems. However, while they are similar in many ways, you can’t try to exterminate them with the same tactics. For example, rats are much bigger than mice, and traditional mouse traps won’t be able to handle rats very efficiently. Here are why mouse traps won’t work on rats and what you can do instead.
What will happen if you try to catch rats with mouse traps?
The biggest difference between mice and rats is their size. Rats are significantly larger than mice. At about eight inches long, rats outgrow mice by a whole five inches. Not only that but a mouse weighs just a single ounce while a full-grown rat can weigh a whopping eighteen ounces.
Therefore, while mouse traps can catch and ultimately kill a mouse in one swing, a rat is more likely to have the clamp slam down on their flesh and walk off, trap and all. It may die later from injuries, but you won’t know where, making it difficult to find it before the odor begins to emanate. Other methods of rat control have their downfalls as well. Sticky traps, for example, may work on younger, smaller rats, but most rats will be able to pull themselves off and walk away, bringing your trap with them. Even if you do manage to get one stuck on your trap, the hassle of pulling them off, maybe while they’re still alive, makes it not worth the effort. Meanwhile, poisons are too dangerous for children and pets and buying a cat to take care of your rat problem may not be tremendously useful.
What you should do instead
You can buy a rat-sized clamp trap if you put it in a safe location away from wandering feet as they are strong enough to break a finger. But it may be better to get a walk-in trap which catches them alive in cages and allows you to drop them off in the woods away from your house. There are also CO2 powered traps which invite rats to stick their heads inside a machine before a CO2 pressurized piston strikes them on the head and kills them instantaneously and humanely. There are some traps which work similarly, only they electrocute them, killing them just as effectively.
Rats can cause a severe health risk, so don’t feel like you need to approach your rodent problems alone. Bug Man Exterminating has what it takes to wipe out rats, mice and whatever other pests are giving you trouble. For more information, or to find quality pest control services, contact Bug Man.