The Bottom Line Impact Of Rodent Control

Many people would prefer to see rodents not terminated. They seem to forget that Billions of dollars are lost on the crops that these rodents eat every year. And that's just the rats and mice. It's not including the prairie dog, squirrel or an number of other rodents that are roaming out in the crop fields. It literally cost billions in losses, that number did not including the million upon millions that must be spent on products to kill them or at least minimize the amount of damage that rats and mice. People then argue that they are endangered, while this may be true, how many people would be saved from starvation if they had these crops to eat. This discussion is limited to ways and means of how to save the crops that would be destroyed should action not be taken to save them. Remember, if the animals eat the crops, your food prices will go up! And that's part of the bottom line. This discussion is not meant to be exhaustive in ways and means of solving the destruction of crops. There are always new ways, and there are always new means or methods that are developed. It's the nature of the beast (no pun intended).

Shooting, traps, poisons and carbon monoxide are the four primary ways of eliminating rodents. Like with anything, they all have the potential for taking care of the rodents, as well as down sides to them. When making a decision as to which to use, you'll need to consider such things as: the size of the property, financial resources, time and hazard.

1. Shooting mice and rats. While this may sound like a good idea, at least at first. There are many reasons why it's not as productive and beneficial as it first appears. If you life in a city, it may be and probably is illegal to discharge a fire arm, even if it's to kill a rodent. Another problem is that you have to waste time looking for them, and then cleaning them up. You wont know if they're infected with a disease, so you're risking contracting something. Also, you are only going to be able to kill one at a time, unless there happens to be one with babies.
2. Traps. there are many down sides to traps. Yes, you do get (maybe) what you've set the traps for, but here are some of the challenges. You have to place multiple traps out, with bait in both. You need to continually check them to make sure the bait has been snatched, or if the trap worked. That means you have to spend a lot of time, to see if the traps worked. Consider too, that you will need to clean up the mess that will occur. Like with shooting, you can only terminate one rodent at a time.
3. Poison. Yes, it will take care of the critters, but it can take -10 days to kill the rodents. It relies on them coming and eating the poison. If they never eat it, clearly it will have no impact. Furthermore, if children or animals find the poison, it has the potential of damaging them mentally, physically or in extreme cases killing them. Another negative is once consumed, the animal will die somewhere and you'll need to track them down, and remove the decomposing bodies. Since you have to touch them, you run the risk of contracting any disease that the rodent will have.
4. Lastly but not least is using carbon monoxide. Most everything is a plus with this method. You place a wand in the burrow, the rodents home and fill it with carbon monoxide. Pluses, include, but are not limited to killing multiple rodents at one time. There is no mess to clean up. Since they’re burrows are underground, the carbon monoxide wont put animals or children in danger. If done at the beginning of the season, then you can count on getting must of them and saving your crop early. The only real down side is locating their burrows.

As with the methods of solving rodent problems, this was not a comprehensive list of all of the rodents that eat and destroy your crops. It was simply focused on rats and mice. Part of the reason for this is to dispel the myth that rats and mice are something other than pest. There are three primary reasons that mice and rats are categorized as pests.

1. Rats and mice are like any of our children, they are hungry and hungry all of the time. Consequently there is a great deal of damage that is continually done to crops and fields. It's important to realize that the damage that is done, doesn't just occur in fields. The damage is also transferred to stores where the damage will continue. You know the next part of the story. Where there are rodents, there will be urine and droppings. Ewe yuck, but true none-the-less. This is something that must be expected when you have rodents in the fields. Some are bound to leave such things on plants and fruit. Hint: this is why you are to wash them BEFORE you eat them. As a reminder, rats and mice cause spoilage, which in turn causes reduced sales. And as we are all aware of, this causes the price of fruits and vegetables to rise.
2. Mice and rats claws and teeth are very sharp. That's good for them, but not the rest of us. Why? Sharpe teeth and claws allow for mice and rats to gnaw and dig through furniture, clothes and packages. How large the building is doesn't matter to them. They can claw and did through anything. Once inside, they use the walls, wiring and cable to climb throughout the building. At this point, you'll find rat and mice nests throughout the structure. The dangerous part comes if they should chew through electrical wiring. If this occurs a fire is a very real possibility.
3. Lastly, rats especially are known to carry fatal illness as well as world wide epidemics, called pandemics. We've all heard of the bubonic plague, which was a pandemic disease, which deaths world wide.

Rodents of any kind, can potentially be lethal, destroying livestock, crops and potentially humans beings around the world. There is no argument that they are fuzzy, cute and fluffy, but are they worth the consequence that comes with them?