The best bait to use to catch a rat
For nearly everyone on the planet, rats are an undesirable rodent to have anywhere near you for a split second. Never quite bouncing back from the whole black death thing, one rat can send the biggest of guys up onto a table screaming for help. So, when this problem makes its way onto your property, there’s only one thing for it, that rat has to go.
This means that we have to set rat traps and for these traps to work, we must bait them. This article will go into the best baits for rats and how to use said bait effectively.
Why bait the traps?
The whole point of baiting a trap is to lure whichever animal you desire to catch into the trap in question. However, no bait in the world will make up for badly laid traps, rats are not as stupid as everyone thinks them to be, a rat can figure out a suspicious-looking environment and know to run in order to live to fight another day.
So, How Do We Know The Right Location For A Trap?
The key to finding the right place for a trap is locating an area of high traffic. Somewhere that the rat or rats in question pass by frequently or live. To do this you usually have to observe the areas in which you have already spotted the rats or where they have been known to cause trouble. Key areas to pay attention to are the base of walls in areas of the home you less frequently visit such as your basement, look here for holes or brown streaks against the wall, this is the grease given off by the rat. The next thing to look for is feces, this is really the biggest sign of regular traffic, the more brown pellets you find in an area, the more often the rats use said area.
The best idea for implementing properly useful traps is to, as said, place them in these areas of high activity but you should also think about placing not just one but many traps in this area to get the best results.
What types of rat traps are there?
There are countless amounts and variations of rat traps out there, however, the main one is the simple snap trap. This trap is constructed of a spring-loaded bar which, when triggered swings down and crushes the rat, killing it. However, there are more advanced traps out there today. These traps will often use gas or electricity to achieve the same result. These measures are good for incidents of infestations as they can be scaled to work for many rats and are also reusable. There are also more brutal and, probably unnecessary traps out there. These traps are crocodile clip traps and glue traps. Both traps either cause undue pain to the rat or simply torture the rat. In terms of the glue trap, the rat is just stuck in place waiting to starve to death.
Using poison to kill rats
Depending on your relationship with animals, you could view traps as very inhumane, leading you to opt for the seemingly quicker and more humane option of rat poison. However, this assumption isn’t correct, it is in fact so much worse for the rat to be taken care of via poison than a trap. This is mostly because the rat doesn’t die instantly like poisoned spies in the movies do, instead they suffer a long and agonizing death. During this time the rat will run off and hide hoping to shelter while it recovers from this pain. They of course never do recover and eventually die, thus creating your next problem. As the rat ran off and hid, there is a high chance that it will have gone into a hard to reach or find a place and, therefore, when the rat’s carcass begins to rot, there will be a horrible smell.
What Is The Best Bait To Trap A Rat?
As discussed earlier, the bait is not the most important part of a trap, however, it can elevate rather simple traps into highly effective ones whilst luring out smarter rats into traps. The bait is, therefore, a lot of the time, the difference between catching a rat and not. Now, rats being rats, they aren’t too picky about what they would be attracted to food-wise. However, as you want the best possible chance of luring the rat, you want to use the best bait. For this purpose, peanut butter is said to be one of the best and most popular. You could also opt for small chunks of meat or pet food.
So, there you have it, everything you need to know about rat traps and the bait to lay them with. Hopefully, this information helps you the next time you have a rat problem.
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