Humane Pest Control for Rodents

Rodents; they might be pests but that doesn’t mean that they deserve a horrible demise. You don’t need to take an axe to them or bash in their brains to ensure that they never sneak in your home. And besides, rodents are extremely opportunistic which means that they won’t necessarily be deterred from infiltrating your home again if you squished one of their extended family members in front of their beady eyes.

This, is no way, means that you should make peace with them and let them scamper about your home. They need to be exterminated but there are humane ways to do so; ways that won’t traumatize your kids if they happen to spot you during the massacre. Here is what you can do to exterminate them humanely –

Get a Feline

This might seem a bit clichéd but it works. It is certainly the most humane way to rid yourself of rodents. Once Snuggles makes a kill or two, the pesky pests won’t dare step a paw inside your home. Any rats or mice that do will know when to make a hasty retreat when they see claws and teeth coming at them at full tilt. You can also get rat terriers if you or someone in your family is allergic to cats or plain doesn’t like them. Of course, if your neighbors are putting out baits that are sprayed with rat poison its best that you take another approach.

Rat Traps

Not all traps need to be fatal for the pests that are unfortunate enough to be trapped in them. Trap and release contraptions come in handy when it comes to humane exterminations. You can set up squirrel traps at night and wait for the critters to scurry inside them. After you find one of them in the trap, you can release it wherever you want.

Snap Traps

PETA dictates that releasing an animal a hundred yards from where it used to live is inhumane. If the rodents you have released nearby keep coming back, it’s time to seek a more permanent solution to your problems.

The RSPCA recommends regards extermination techniques that ensure a quick death as humane.  These come in a variety of sizes. However, the quality matters as well. Remember, a plastic pack full of traps at cheap rates will not be as effective and may, instead, make the poor rodent go through a slow and painful death. You do not want to check your traps and find a live mouse with a broken back looking at you with pleading eyes. You can prevent something like that from happening if you –

• Keep the surrounding area free of food matter and place the bait only on the trap. In this way, an unwary rodent will prevent itself from snapping the trap prematurely and injuring itself. You want it to get at the bait on the trap itself in order to finish it off immediately.
• If the snap trap doesn’t trap anything the first day, try again the next day. Just make sure you refresh the bait or change your choice of one.If you do happen to find a pest that is still alive after getting stuck in the trap, put it out of its misery quickly with a rapid blow to the head. In addition, make sure that you choose a snap trap that is made of heavy duty plastic or metal instead of wood. The former are easier to clean and also more effective.

Ultrasonic Pest Repeller

If all else fails, you can always resort to using an ultrasonic pest repeller. This is by far the most humane means of pest control especially because it doesn’t exactly kill its target. These are small devices that can easily be plugged in and use high pitched ultrasound frequencies to repel pests such as rats or bed bugs.

The frequencies are not audible to the human ear so you don’t need to worry about the contraption waking you up at night.

Rodent Proof your Home

You don’t have to come up with humane extermination treatments if the pests can’t get inside your home in the first place. Make sure that there are no stray crumbs lying around for them to sniff out. Rats can easily gnaw through cardboard so keep food items such as cereal in sealed glass jars.

Peppermint is also known to repel the creatures. Stuff some cotton balls soaked with the substance in holes or entry points where you might suspect they might be coming through. Of course, you can also make your pest problem go away if you seal up the holes. Just make sure that you use cement. No rodent will be able to chew its way in this way.

Inhumane Treatments

• Why Poison is Inhumane

Because not only does it guarantee a slow and painful death for the rodent who ingests it, it is also a threat to any other animal or scavenger that decides to make a meal of the pest after it breathes its last. The same goes for poisoned rodent baits that make rodents go somewhere else to die. Such poisons contain anticoagulants that cause pests to die by bleeding internally. This may help you get rid of the pest but it is a horrible way for it to die.

Worse, the family pet may decide to investigate (read sample) the rodent’s carcass. The poison will still be in the rodent. If your dog ends up eating the rodent’s prone body, make it throw up immediately.

• Sticky Traps

Rodents that get themselves stuck to glue traps often chew their own legs or suffocate to death if they happen to get their faces stuck to the sticky material.

The long hours of stress and panic cause them to defecate on themselves and they starve to death if the homeowner does not bother to check the traps and put an end to their suffering.

• Rodent Zappers

It is what it says. These are electric traps that, you guessed it, zap rodents into oblivion. However, the devices work more like stun guns than live electric cables. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make them any more humane. Once a rodent steps into the trap, it makes it pass out through a high voltage charge. After that, the rat or mouse dies of muscle constrictions during which its vital organs like the lungs and heart stop functioning.

• Shooting

This might seem fun but it won’t be if you end up shooting anything, or worse anyone, else in your shooting spree. And besides, blowing the brains out of any creature is hardly the humane thing to do. This is real life, not a video game.

Remember, humane traps like live traps can only remain humane if you remember to keep checking on them. Rodents cannot survive for more than a few hours without water or food. You can easily find the traps in your local hardware store or pest control service.

The pest control service can also have more humane techniques to exterminate the pests. You can always hire them to take care of the problem for you especially if you do not have the means to do so yourself. You will spare yourself the trauma.