Ruffian and I woke to the sound of vermin scurrying around in our attic the other night. Grrrr.
After doing a brief poop analysis the following day, we determined the vermin were rat in nature and we purchased the appropriate poison (D-con, or Victor…I don’t remember which except that it’s for both rats and mice). The box says they can eat a leathal dose the first time, but that it might be 4 or 5 days before we see any death. So my question: during these 4 or 5 days, what exactly is going on in their little rat bodies? And does it hurt much? And are they going to barf all over our attic? (And can they even barf?)
Also a related question: suppose I don’t make it into the corners of our attic and find all the corpses? How long do they stink before they just get all dried up?
Rat poison is usually a powerful anticolagulant. The rat begins to bleed internally and eventually that kills him. They aren’t going to barf (it’s in their bloodstream, not their stomach), thought I don’t know how much it will hurt them.
Rats can barf – they do it if they eat something that tastes bad. Rat poison doesn’t trigger the reaction, though, since it doesn’t do its work until it gets into the bloodstream.
Search google for warfarin - one of the older rat poisons. Its is, as RealityChuck describes, an anticoagulant. IIRC, they become thirsty as they bleed to death and leave your house in search of water.
No rats can’t barf. Several of the early rat poisons worked by inducing vomiting. Since they can’t do it they rupture their internal organs and die. But that’s beside the point.
Single dose rat poisons these days are coumalin/bromdialone type anticoagulants. They stop the blood from clotting. They kill because the body develops minor haemorrhages constantly, particularly around the joints and the skin surface. Without an ability to clot these bleed constantly and lead to death. Exactly how varies. It’s usually through dehydration and nutrient loss. The rats just can’t drink enough to maintain blood pressure and can’t eat enough to rpelace the nutrients lost from the bloodstream. This is often compounded because bleeding into the joints produces something akin to severe arthritis and they can’t move to food.
Is it painful? From the accounts of the few people who have experiences it it’s not real nice. Not the worst death, but like the worst case of ‘flu you never had. Severe joint pain, unquenchable thirst, constant abdominal cramps.
How long they stink for depends on how hot and moist your attic is. At this time of year with an unheated attic you could get lucky and not notice a thing with mice, they’ll just wither up in the cold. You will notice a mousy smell in the attic itself, but elsewhere will be fine Rats will produce a slight odour, but if you’re lucky it will go away inside a week. OTOH if your attack is hot and moist, and with no flies a dead rat could be fairly objectionable for a month. Hard to say really.
Funny thing. My dad takes Coumadin to thin his blood to stop a possible thrombus. It’s one of those “have to monitor” drugs. The dif between a lethal dose and a therapeutic dose ain’t great.
Another thing… My dad has a slow heartbeat, and the doc says there isn’t any medicine to speed up a heart.
I recommended KFC extra crispy (With all that MSG), but believe me, it did not go over well.
The non-coagulated bleeding is hastened in rats (and mice) by their squeezing into and through small places, IIRC. If you were to give an equal dose to a pet rat that wasn’t too active, they might well live through it. The point is that the ‘poison’ is not necessarily deadly, but it is fatal with normal rodent activity.
This stuff isn’t warfarin. It’s one of the newer acute anticoagulants.
"There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available regarding this subject, but I will quote the paragraph that addresses the reason why rats do not have the ability to vomit from Laboratory Animal Medicine, Editors James G. Fox, Bennett J. Cohen, and Franklin M. Loew. It is as follows.
“The stomach of the rat is divided into two parts; the forestomach (nonglandular) and the corpus (glandular). The two portions are separated by a limiting ridge. The esophagus enters at the lesser curvatrue of the stomach through a fold of the limiting ridge. This fold is responsible for the inability of the rat to vomit.” http://www.rmca.org/Articles/qna6_99.htm
Hi new member astralla here. I was on Warfarin for years constantly under and over dosing. When I underdosed I got severe blood clots. When I overdosed, my urine went pink from blood and my faeces had lots of blood. But it never gave me discomfort. They changed my anticoagulant to a safer one.
No, they don’t give meds to speed up your heart. I have a pacemaker in my chest to do that. And I have a defibrillator in my chest for when it goes too fast!
If Ratsak uses the rats behaviour of squeezing in tight places, why do they warn you to keep it away from birds and other animals which don’t squeeze anywhere?
I have crushed Ratsak and put it in bread with sugar and water to kill a gang of miner birds which attack all the parrots which I feed (and my cat!). Only put it out when i can monitor when miners are feeding. I have only started doing this yesterday so I hope in about four days they’ll be no more.
Also, I have heart failure so i’m always thirsty. i hope its not because I’m internally bleeding as suggested above. Mind you I have just had a positive screening for blood in the bowel indicative of bowel cancer . Hmmm!
Brodifacoum. One advantage it has over warfarin for rat poison is much, much slower elimination from the body. If the rat didn’t eat a lethal dose of warfarin, it might have eliminated it before it returned to the rat bait. The brodifacoum will build up and kill them even if they eat sublethal doses. It also means that it is much more of a problem as an environmental pollutant and a causer of secondary poisonings in whatever eats the dead rat than the warfarin was.
There are also homemade poisons based on baking soda. Since mice can’t burp the gas builds up and ruptures their insides. I’ve also seen recipes for warfarin mixed with non-food grade diatomaceous earth.
An important underlying point is that rat poisons ought to be slow-acting, preferably requiring multiple doses: rats are pretty good at identifying and avoiding a source of food that produces bad results quickly.