Forgive me for Thinking Like an Engineer
Last weekend our cat, Tilly, was poisoned. When I saw him lying on the living room floor he was suffering some form of seizure, shuddering, stretching and curling uncontrollably. His pulse was so light, his breathing so shallow, that I was sure they had stopped altogether. The spasms were too strong to get him safely into a the carrier so he went to the vet wrapped in a towel.
Having heard and seen what happens to poisoned animals, I feared the worst. Even if he survived, I was sure there would be permanent damage, that he would never be the same again, would never be fit or well.
Fortunately we'd found him in time and got him medical attention as quickly as possible. So after a night on a drip he's back to himself with nothing but a slightly blooded leg from the IV.
Needless to say, my relief has been tempered to some degree by frothing outrage.
A while back there was a discussion in comments to a Boing Boing post on the so-called "better mousetrap", various parties offering advice on catching and killing vermin. I offered my own opinion that, catching and killing rats, mice, roaches, anything of that nature is essentially futile, no more effective than bailing out a river. Lay all the poison the pest-controllers will sell you, poison all the rats you like, there are plenty more waiting to fill the vacuum you are creating. In the meantime you are leaving incredibly toxic substances around for people's pets to find, occasionally in the form of dying, delirious rodents wandering away from their territory and taking the poison with them. Not to mention the possibility of inquisitive children coming into contact with the materials. And what do you get for your trouble? A couple of months without a pest, if you're lucky. But if you're unlucky...
A couple of years ago I was working IT on premises where they had fallen for this dumb idea to deal with a handful of mice in the building (which I had never seen but which the female staff swore were the rabid harbingers of all-consuming death). The pest controller left a half-dozen little white containers of poison around the halls and wandered off to the next job. Did he have any other suggestions? Not that I heard, after all, why give the customer a permanent solution when quick fixes guarantee repeat business? After a few weeks we began to notice a bad smell in the offices. You can imagine what had happened. It was a couple of weeks, during which the stench rapidly became unbearable, before the pest controller finally located the rancid corpse he had generated, tucked away under a raised floor.
As I said in that Boing Boing thread, the best mouse trap is not a trap at all. There are only two things that one need do to deal with a rodent problem: take away their reason for staying, then take away their means of getting in. Their reason for staying is food, remove the food source, or at least put it out of their reach, and the rats won't want to be there. Keep your house clean and tidy, don't leave spills and crumbs on the floor, throw out your junk and minimise their hiding places. Keep your trash secure in metal or plastic bins, not just a heaps of bags, and keep the bins and the area around the them clean. Find out how they got into the place to begin with and seal it up. I've heard stories about POWs beating food tins flat to armour-plate their food stores - this isn't rocket science. Think about the area you live in: is there flytipping going on, are there empty or derelict buildings, is there a neighbour with a garden full of garbage? These are things your council and maybe the police need to deal with.
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Perhaps, Mr Emerson, but build a better world and they won't have to.
The bottom line is that a pest controller shouldn't be selling you something to kill every living thing that comes into contact with it, he should be showing you what must change to disrupt the rat-friendly habitat you are living in. If you have a pest problem you don't need a better mousetrap, what you need are better living conditions.
Having heard and seen what happens to poisoned animals, I feared the worst. Even if he survived, I was sure there would be permanent damage, that he would never be the same again, would never be fit or well.
Fortunately we'd found him in time and got him medical attention as quickly as possible. So after a night on a drip he's back to himself with nothing but a slightly blooded leg from the IV.
Needless to say, my relief has been tempered to some degree by frothing outrage.
A while back there was a discussion in comments to a Boing Boing post on the so-called "better mousetrap", various parties offering advice on catching and killing vermin. I offered my own opinion that, catching and killing rats, mice, roaches, anything of that nature is essentially futile, no more effective than bailing out a river. Lay all the poison the pest-controllers will sell you, poison all the rats you like, there are plenty more waiting to fill the vacuum you are creating. In the meantime you are leaving incredibly toxic substances around for people's pets to find, occasionally in the form of dying, delirious rodents wandering away from their territory and taking the poison with them. Not to mention the possibility of inquisitive children coming into contact with the materials. And what do you get for your trouble? A couple of months without a pest, if you're lucky. But if you're unlucky...
A couple of years ago I was working IT on premises where they had fallen for this dumb idea to deal with a handful of mice in the building (which I had never seen but which the female staff swore were the rabid harbingers of all-consuming death). The pest controller left a half-dozen little white containers of poison around the halls and wandered off to the next job. Did he have any other suggestions? Not that I heard, after all, why give the customer a permanent solution when quick fixes guarantee repeat business? After a few weeks we began to notice a bad smell in the offices. You can imagine what had happened. It was a couple of weeks, during which the stench rapidly became unbearable, before the pest controller finally located the rancid corpse he had generated, tucked away under a raised floor.
As I said in that Boing Boing thread, the best mouse trap is not a trap at all. There are only two things that one need do to deal with a rodent problem: take away their reason for staying, then take away their means of getting in. Their reason for staying is food, remove the food source, or at least put it out of their reach, and the rats won't want to be there. Keep your house clean and tidy, don't leave spills and crumbs on the floor, throw out your junk and minimise their hiding places. Keep your trash secure in metal or plastic bins, not just a heaps of bags, and keep the bins and the area around the them clean. Find out how they got into the place to begin with and seal it up. I've heard stories about POWs beating food tins flat to armour-plate their food stores - this isn't rocket science. Think about the area you live in: is there flytipping going on, are there empty or derelict buildings, is there a neighbour with a garden full of garbage? These are things your council and maybe the police need to deal with.
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Perhaps, Mr Emerson, but build a better world and they won't have to.
The bottom line is that a pest controller shouldn't be selling you something to kill every living thing that comes into contact with it, he should be showing you what must change to disrupt the rat-friendly habitat you are living in. If you have a pest problem you don't need a better mousetrap, what you need are better living conditions.