What's the problem with rats? (1 Viewer)

I regularly see rats climbing the trees to reach my bird-feeders, and often see them cleaning dropped seeds from the ground below.

My first reaction was the 'shock-horror' generally associated with rats, but as I watched them regularly, they became just another source of wild-life fascination in my garden, adding a small furry mammal to my list of feathered visitors, and the young ones are totally cute and playful.

So... My question is whether rats really deserve the disgust with which we tend to treat them. Is there any real harm or danger from them that requires we try to exterminate them from a garden? Why are they 'picked on' above squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, etc? Or is it simply a matter of unjustified prejudice?

This is a really genuine, open-minded question, so please try to help me here.

Rose (novice birder)

Rose said:

So... My question is whether rats really deserve the disgust with which we tend to treat them. Is there any real harm or danger from them that requires we try to exterminate them from a garden? Why are they 'picked on' above squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, etc? Or is it simply a matter of unjustified prejudice?

This is a really genuine, open-minded question, so please try to help me here.

Rose (novice birder)

Click to expand...

They spread black death all those years ago, and caused the extinction of manx shearwaters from the Calf of Man in the 19th century through eating the eggs and young in places that mankind could not get to. They have threatened the existence of many other avian species on small islands where there were no mammalian predators, too.
As far as the Calf of Man is concerned, manx shearwaters began breeding again a few years ago, but only after many years of attempts at poisoning those longtailed rodents.
They are regarded as bad luck in the Isle of Man, too, so I may be biased!

Unfortunately wild brown rats are a very good at spreading diseases, due to their habits. Rats are slightly incontinent and their urine may contain Weil's disease which will contaminate water sources. They stock pile food which will rot, again a source of disease. They will gnaw almost anything, even plaster and concrete so are more than a nuisance to your house. If you have wild rats in your garden then really you should inform the environmental health dept.
On the other hand tame rats are brilliant, very social, can be taught tricks and because they are hand reared are not disease carriers.

It is important to remember that your supposed to be no more than 10ft from a rat at any one time. Our fear and loathing of rats is often misplaced. Yes Weils disease is a risk and people need to take precautions. Human waste management leaves an opportunity for rats to become infected with disease and provides an easy meal.

That said i wouldn't want a large rat population in my garden. Although i have kept many fancy rats.

Pet rats are fine,so intelligent.

Wild rats are disgusting , so they say..............

To me they are wild life in general,I don't worry too much about them,live and let live. :eat:

Rats are worshipped in some of the temples in India and they run all over the place.....no thanks!....one of these needed :cat:

John.

Well, at the risk of being shot down in flames, I'll stick my neck out and say I LIKE RATS!!!! :t:
Ok, so they can carry a few diseases but so do humans ( what species did you catch your last bug off - bet it wasn't a rat LOL ) and they are only mega-successful because humans are so darned messy - if we didn't leave our mess and unwanted food lying around then their numbers wouldn't increase so easily.
But yes, I do believe in removing them from islands where they are not indigenous ( is that spelt correctly?) and are destroying bird species - normally they only reach those islands because of humans carrying them there, however unintentionally.
I live right next door to a farm where, it has to be said, the farmer IS a messy old so-and-so and there IS a big rat population. I've seen some big 'uns in the hedgerows but never any around our cottage. Even last winter when we had a deep snowfall there were no rat pawprints around my feeders - just one tiny trail of a mouse which led across the snow from the wall of the house to the feeders and back LOL I felt sorry for it so put a handful of seed against the cottage wall.

Rats, to me, are just as fascinating as any snake, spider, flea, shark etc - all the things which most humans actively dislike - and I wish folk WOULD put their predjudices aside and actually open their eyes and look at things anew. Everything on this planet has a place.

And, as an afterthought, THREE times I have been attacked/approached whilst out birding by my fellow humans - still waiting for a rat to attack me! :'D

Hi Rose

I don't really have anything against rats but I wouldn't encourage them into my garden as they do carry diseases that can be passed onto the birds. They are also prolific breeders so you could end up with more rats than birds. I suggest you try and discourage them by moving the feeders so they cannot reach them and try to keep the ground below the feeders clear of food especially overnight. I have inserted information from the RSPB that may be of interest to you:

"Hygiene precautions

Prevention is always better than a cure, and is the best thing you can do to help the birds. The following precautions may help to avoid outbreaks of disease as a result of feeding the birds in your garden. Most diseases are transmitted by faeces. If contaminated droppings mix with food, the birds will run a risk of picking up the infection. Since the contamination can originate either from other birds or from animals such as rats, it is important to guard against infection from both sources.

Use a birdtable or hanging feeders. If food is scattered on the ground, make sure birds eat it all during daylight hours. Rats are attracted to leftover food and often carry salmonella or other diseases, which can affect birds or humans. A ground feeding tray is preferable to putting food directly on the ground, since it is easier to keep clean.

Keep birdtables and surrounding areas clean and free from droppings or mouldy food. Such material forms reservoirs of infection by providing breeding grounds for parasites and bacteria. If large amounts of droppings have accumulated, they should be cleared and burnt and the ground cleansed with a 10% solution of disinfectant.

Clean and wash the bird table and hanging feeders regularly, and move feeding stations to a new area every month to prevent droppings accumulating underneath.

Remember to change water in any containers regularly. Droppings from bathing birds can accumulate in bird baths.

Clean the feeders out of doors, and have separate utensils for the job. Certainly you should never clean the feeders with the rest of the washing up, or even in the same bowl or sink."

Hope this proves helpful

Jo

ok, so thanks for a few thoughts to mull over... but also a couple of instant responses spring to mind...

1) I read how Great Tits will empty a feeder and store the food somewhere else, and we all know about squirrels, etc, so why should we be horrified that a rat storing food might bring disease into the garden?

2) Black Death??? transmitted by the fleas on the rats I believe, and only where the fleas also feed on humans. I think its quite a while since any UK rat fleas transmitted any Black Death infections. However... I have heard of a number of serious infections in children, including blinding, resulting from pet dogs fouling public areas... Maybe the environmental health should redirect their extermination activities??? (just kidding.. I think)

3) Weills disease... Living a few miles from a canal, I have heard of this from friends with house-boats, but nobody seems to have actually known of anyone locally who was infected. Rats are a constant in our road, due to the nearby railway line I'm told, (not to mention the silly people who kindly put cooked rice under the railway bridge each day for those sweet pigeons who nest there!!!!) but I've never heard of, or seen reported, any case of this disease in our locality. I wonder what the true risk is, as opposed to urban myths?

4) Clean the ground below the bird feeders? Impossible due to the hedge/undergrowth beneath the trees, but the rats do an incredibly good job as cleaners themselves here... This is almost a plus-point in their favour! LOL

5) Pet rats are intelligent and cool... I agree completely. And having kept them in the past, I know how clean and almost odourless they are. It's just that I'm trying to discover why their wild cousins should inspire such loathing in modern times. Or is our fear just as irrational as that of spiders???

THANKS GILL, for speaking up in defence of rats, I too am tending to find more positives than negatives about them, but I'm still keeping an open mind at the moment.

Rose

Gill Osborne said:

Well, at the risk of being shot down in flames, I'll stick my neck out and say I LIKE RATS!!!! :t:
Ok, so they can carry a few diseases but so do humans ( what species did you catch your last bug off - bet it wasn't a rat LOL ) and they are only mega-successful because humans are so darned messy - if we didn't leave our mess and unwanted food lying around then their numbers wouldn't increase so easily.
But yes, I do believe in removing them from islands where they are not indigenous ( is that spelt correctly?) and are destroying bird species - normally they only reach those islands because of humans carrying them there, however unintentionally.
I live right next door to a farm where, it has to be said, the farmer IS a messy old so-and-so and there IS a big rat population. I've seen some big 'uns in the hedgerows but never any around our cottage. Even last winter when we had a deep snowfall there were no rat pawprints around my feeders - just one tiny trail of a mouse which led across the snow from the wall of the house to the feeders and back LOL I felt sorry for it so put a handful of seed against the cottage wall.

Rats, to me, are just as fascinating as any snake, spider, flea, shark etc - all the things which most humans actively dislike - and I wish folk WOULD put their predjudices aside and actually open their eyes and look at things anew. Everything on this planet has a place.

And, as an afterthought, THREE times I have been attacked/approached whilst out birding by my fellow humans - still waiting for a rat to attack me! :'D

Click to expand...

Good on you Gill :loveme: :flowers:

wasn't it the Black Rat that brought plague as opposed to the commonly encountered Brown Rat ?

London Birder said:

wasn't it the Black Rat that brought plague as opposed to the commonly encountered Brown Rat ?

Click to expand...

Yes, it was . .

or was it . . .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1925513.stm

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Black Rats were as susceptible to the plague as humans, other mammals which were immune to it acted as carriers, their fleas gave the disease to the rats which then entered human dwellings . .

Never seen a Black Rat myself, quite rare these days, manily confined to ports I believe.

saluki

Keith Dickinson said:

Unfortunately wild brown rats are a very good at spreading diseases, due to their habits. Rats are slightly incontinent and their urine may contain Weil's disease which will contaminate water sources. They stock pile food which will rot, again a source of disease. They will gnaw almost anything, even plaster and concrete so are more than a nuisance to your house. If you have wild rats in your garden then really you should inform the environmental health dept.
On the other hand tame rats are brilliant, very social, can be taught tricks and because they are hand reared are not disease carriers.

Click to expand...

i know someone who once trained their pet rat to gnaw away excessive toe nail growth,i thought that was pretty clever

matt

Gill Osborne said:

Well, at the risk of being shot down in flames, I'll stick my neck out and say I LIKE RATS!!!! :t:

Click to expand...

Good for you - I agree! It makes me cringe at places like Titchwell to hear people looking at the feeding station saying "URGH! Look at that disgusting rat - why hasn't somebody killed it?!". I'm sure they're no more likely to spread disease than any other rodent - I think the fear and loathing is just a historical thing without significant base.

As you say, though, they are a problem where introduced by man artificially (but then so are hedgehogs, squirrels, and rabbits to name a few).

I just wonder how the general public would view Grey Squirrels without the big fluffy tail... not much different, I suspect.

matt green said:

i know someone who once trained their pet rat to gnaw away excessive toa nail growth,i thought that was pretty clever

matt

Click to expand...

Whose toes - the rat's or the owner's ?

matt green said:

i know someone who once trained their pet rat to gnaw away excessive toa nail growth,i thought that was pretty clever

matt

Click to expand...

That's grossss!

Weills (VILES) disease is a real threat to workers on underground sewers. As a retired firefighter, the threat of this disease is real enough, and I know of several instances of fatalities.

If we entered sewers our crews would always wear protective clothing; gloves, breathing apparatus etc.

Never forget that rats underground come above ground from time to time.

If you think that (wild) rats are cute, then think again.

John.

can't say I've knowingly seen a Black Rat, thought I had one (looked very dark as it scuttled away) along a Thames-side path in Docklands a few years back but was reliably informed that Brown Rat has a dark form ... yep, my understanding also is that Black is a pretty rare critter these days

Weil's disease refresher >

http://www.caveinfo.org.uk/nca/weils.htm

apologies if link doesn't work, mine rarely do ...

dbradnum said:

Whose toes - the rat's or the owner's ?

Click to expand...

the owner's,and anyone else willing [with long toe nails]!

it was the sweetest and most funniest thing i've ever seen

matt 3

Gill Osborne said:

Well, at the risk of being shot down in flames, I'll stick my neck out and say I LIKE RATS!!!! :t:
Ok, so they can carry a few diseases but so do humans ( what species did you catch your last bug off - bet it wasn't a rat LOL ) and they are only mega-successful because humans are so darned messy - if we didn't leave our mess and unwanted food lying around then their numbers wouldn't increase so easily.
But yes, I do believe in removing them from islands where they are not indigenous ( is that spelt correctly?) and are destroying bird species - normally they only reach those islands because of humans carrying them there, however unintentionally.
I live right next door to a farm where, it has to be said, the farmer IS a messy old so-and-so and there IS a big rat population. I've seen some big 'uns in the hedgerows but never any around our cottage. Even last winter when we had a deep snowfall there were no rat pawprints around my feeders - just one tiny trail of a mouse which led across the snow from the wall of the house to the feeders and back LOL I felt sorry for it so put a handful of seed against the cottage wall.

Rats, to me, are just as fascinating as any snake, spider, flea, shark etc - all the things which most humans actively dislike - and I wish folk WOULD put their predjudices aside and actually open their eyes and look at things anew. Everything on this planet has a place.

And, as an afterthought, THREE times I have been attacked/approached whilst out birding by my fellow humans - still waiting for a rat to attack me! :'D

Click to expand...

100 % in agreeance with everything you've said Gill. Don't have rats at either of my feeding station, but do have three mice at my forest feeder. One comes back and fro every afternoon and the other two live in the roof of my cabin - was going to try to persuade them to move into a purpose-built mouse-house, but was too lazy to build it, so decided they can spent the winter in my newly insulated cabin.