Depending on your perspective, rats are either the superheroes or supervillains of the animal world. Equipped with incredible survival skills and high intelligence, rats often survive a range of difficult environmental conditions and even all-out human efforts to kill them.
Domesticated rats can make for low-maintenance pets, as they bond deeply with their owners and exhibit quirky personality traits. But wild rats, like the Norway and brown rats found throughout many major cities, are often a public health nuisance.
Rats! How I hate them. I don’t know about you, but I detest every bit of those pesky little chucks of frustration and annoyance.
I have once seen a rat bite through a bottle of oil. What manner of sorcery is that? Laugh all you want but I am going on a rat extermination mission. I join the Spanish to say No mas meaning no more. And this is how I am doing it:
*Onions: Apparently, those irksome rodents do not like the pungent smell of onions. That is because its smell is odious to them. All that is needed is a slice of onion placed inside their hole or where they usually pass. From now on, I will add onions to my weapons of mass destruction, they come in handy.
* Ammonia: Ammonia smells like the urine of a possible predator and so is very irritating to the rats. I will need two spoons of detergent, a quarter glass of water and two cups of ammonia.
Then, I’ll mix all ingredients together and pour it in a spray bottle and spray it where rats frequently appear. Rats cannot stand the smell of ammonia and so it so chases them away.
*Bay leaves: If you are joining me on the rat extermination mission, we can set a trap with leaves for them. They think bay leaf is food and so eat it with all joy.
However, it kills them eventually as they are highly poisonous for them. For the ambush, all we need are some dried bay leaves. We’ll grind them and sprinkle them on the suspected area they come in through and get satisfactory results. This can be done every 5-7 days for best results.
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*Baking soda solution: Baking soda is known to keep rats away from the area they like to frequent. Mix 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar or powdered chocolate and 1 cup of baking soda together.
The sugar or chocolate will attract the rats and the baking soda will soon kill them after they have been consumed. Fill some jars with it to bait them and place them in suspected areas.
*Peppermint essential oil: The beauty about this is that it has a beautiful smell. All we need to do is put some drops of peppermint oil on cotton balls and place them in the suspected rat-prone areas.
We will need to replace the cotton balls after 5-7 days depending on the quantity of oil we put on it. Alternatively, we can make use of citronella and castor oil or grow mint plants around the boundaries of our home.
If you are still thinking twice about joining the rat extermination movement, I’ll leave you with this, Lassa fever is real.