5 ways to rid your home and yard of rats without using poison
Rat overpopulation has been a problem in Oakland County for years. Many neighborhood grass-roots groups have cropped up to combat this problem and educate people on the best ways to decrease the number of rats in these residential areas.
Jan Bills is the administrator for a Facebook page called Royal Oak RATS (Residents Are The Solution). Over 450 people follow the page. She first noticed rats becoming rampant after metro Detroit’s flood in 2014. Ever since, she said, residents have just exacerbated the issue.
“The rats are not the problem. It’s the people that are the problem,” she said. “As long as we keep providing a food source and shelter and water for them we’re never going to reduce the population.”
Laura Mikulski is one of the administrators of the Ferndale Rat Patrol Facebook group that has almost 900 members in it. She first noticed the problem about six years ago and is now a rat-eradication expert.
"In that first year that I was trapping rats, I went from house to house in my neighborhood and I just told everybody about the rat problem and asked to do an inspection of their backyard," she said. "Most people were very amenable to it."
She became an expert by figuring out how the rats move, what they like and where they like to create burrows.
"Understanding their basic biology, I found that I could put the traps in certain areas at certain times with certain bait and catch them within ten minutes of putting a trap down," Mikulski said.
Wild Birds Unlimited store owner LuAnn Linker said the rat population has been growing ever since Metro Detroit started repairing infrastructure and having constant construction.
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Linker said the key to eliminating rat overpopulation in Oakland County is for the residents themselves to take responsibility for their yard.
“A lot of people don’t take the time to really police their properties and some people just don’t want to deal with it,” she said. “But, the only way that we're going to get this under control is if every resident takes responsibility for good stewardship in their yards and with whatever hobbies they have.”
Mikulski said the Ferndale Facebook group did a campaign in September 2016 to try to track how many rats were killed in that month and how many rats were seen. She said in that one-month time period, about 200 rats were killed, but there were about 700 different pieces of rat evidence, including rat sightings, burrows and trails.
These groups in Oakland County have been educating people on the adverse effects of rat poison. In February, Royal Oak RATS held a community workshop where they taught citizens about the characteristics of rats, and how to deal with them without poison.
“They breed unbelievably. A male and a female rat can produce over 2,000 rats in one breeding season," Bills said. "They’re nocturnal, so just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there."
Bills was clear to emphasize the group’s goal is not to completely eradicate the rat population because rats have a role in the food web. Nor do they want to hurt rat predators by using poison.
“The hawks, owls, any of your large raptors, when they eat the (poisoned) rat, then they become a victim of the poison as well,” she said. “What we don’t want to do is banish a whole ecosystem.”
Mikulski said she has been against using poison from the beginning.
"First of all, you're putting the natural environment at risk," she said. "It's also cruel to the rats."
Not only are the poisons detrimental to the ecosystem, but also to pets and children. Bills said children under six are the most susceptible to the danger of rat poison.
“Poison is a terrible way to go,” Linker said.
Here are five ways to combat rats without using poison, based on recommendations from leaders of community groups and wildlife experts.
1. Use owl houses to attract rat predators.
Owls, and other birds of prey, are natural rat eradicators. Bills said there are a few characteristics to an appropriate owl house. The opening needs to be large enough for an owl to fit in it, but not so large that other large birds can fit. Also, the house needs to be on an 8- to 10-foot pole, so squirrels do not habitat the house. “Last summer, I had a family of four owls (in my backyard). I will tell you, ever since I’ve had my owl houses up, I have not seen any signs of rodents in my backyard, so really, the raptors are the solution,” Bills said. “People are pretty jazzed about it and we just have to keep the momentum going.”
2. Use traps or boxes to kill or capture the rats.
One type of trap is called a snap trap. According to Bills, this is one of the more humane ways to kill rats because it is such a quick kill. Linker uses a black box she purchased from Great Lakes Pest Control in Berkley because the box can be locked so children and pets can’t get to it and no one can get hurt from it. “They may be vermin, but they’re still a life,” Linker said. Mikulski said to make sure to put the traps inside a box or under a milk crate so other animals, like raccoons and cats, can't be hurt by the rat trap.
3. Use smoke bombs to smoke out the rats from your yard.
This is the best solution if you see burrows created by rats in your backyard. The way to tell if the burrow was created by a rat and not another animal like a chipmunk is to look at the way the rodent created the hole. If there is a lot of loose soil and the hole was created at an angle, then that was most likely created by a rat. You can't use smoke bombs if the burrow is near a tree, porch or other flammable structure.
4. Use dry ice to deter rats from your home or shed.
Mikulski said she uses dry ice when a burrow is near someone's porch or near a more urban area. The dry ice produces carbon dioxide, which anesthetizes the rat and kills it. "It's very humane, it's very quick, it's very effective," she said. While dry ice is more expensive than smoke bombs, this solution is the best one for rat habitats that have invaded shelters, Bills said. Mikulski said her group did a Rat Burrow Busting Day on May 20 in the downtown Ferndale area. They used about $150 worth of dry ice and killed over 90 rats, so she said the dry ice is worth the money in most cases.
5. Police your yard for burrows to head off the problem from the start.
Linker said residents need to regularly check their yard for burrows. “(The rats) don’t travel a really far distance from where they live, and so if you have burrows in your yard, then you’re probably providing a food source,” she said. If it’s a food garden, she suggests using a raised bed or making sure to pick the ripe fruits and vegetables right away. If it’s a bird feeder that’s the problem, Linker has many different solutions, including keeping them elevated at least 48 inches off the ground, installing a baffle on the pole, using food blocks to not scatter seed and using pre-hulled seeds. “It takes every single resident policing their property, looking for signs, eliminating opportunities (for the rats). We want to do that without banning certain activities,” Linker said.
The Ferndale Rat Patrol group will be in the Ferndale public library on Aug. 22 and will be leading an educational session on how to effectively and humanely trap rats without using poison. The session is open to the public.