Quote:
Originally Posted by taco.vidal
Rat poison is usually anti-coagulant. It kills rats (or anything else that ingests) slowly. That means if you have mice, they can eat and then will die slowly and in a number of days can die anywhere. Then potentially have dead mice in your walls or elsewhere that you dont want rotting corpses.
Birds eat mice, so if a bird eats a mouse that ate your poison, you will likely kill that bird with your poison. Someones cat could also eat that poisoned mouse and get sick and die.
Bird or other wild animals or pets or even kids could directly eat the poison and get sick or die as well.
Your unlikely to kill all the mice with poison anyways, so the problem will continue. You need to find the source of the mice and get rid it and all the mice.
|
Most rodenticides will have a listed LD50 Rating, which is the lethal dose required to kill 50% of a population; the higher the LD50 rating, the more needed to cause stomach upset/damage to "non-targets."
Good general rule of thumb is to trap inside, bait outside. For reasons also mentioned in this thread, you don't want it to eat the bait and then die in transit within your walls...then you're looking at cutting into the wall to remove it or to let it decompose on its own, which depending on air flow/temperature can be a slow and unpleasant smelling process.
Best bet is sealing off any accesses that you can find outside, and then bait outside. Here in the States Contrac Blox (Bell Labs) have been an industry standard for some time, but I don't know where you can get them north of the border. I'm sure you could find someone selling them online - but get a tamper-resistant box/station to keep it in so that other animals don't get curious.
Or, just call a pro. Rodent baiting programs are relatively inexpensive.