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How Cities Are Using Dry Ice To Kill Rats (usatoday.com)
Some of the United States' biggest cities have resorted to using dry ice to kill rats. Since dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) turns into a gas, sanitation officials simply need to drop chunks of it into rat infested burrows and let science do the rest. Longtime Slashdot reader mi writes: USA Today reports: "Earlier this week, USA TODAY observed Chicago sanitation department workers at one of the city's oldest parks scoop chunks of smoking dry ice into a burrow before quickly covering the entry and exit holes with dirt and newspaper to stop any rats from escaping as the -109.3-degree Fahrenheit gas dissipated. Sanitation workers say they treat burrows during morning hours, when rats are less active and most likely to be huddled inside the burrows. The asphyxiated dead rats then decompose in place and out-of-sight of city denizens who count the disease-carrying vermin among the vilest of indignities of urban living. 'We are seeing 60% fewer burrows in areas where we are using the dry ice,' said Charles Williams, Chicago's streets and sanitation commissioner. 'It's more environmentally friendly, and it's very humane on the rodents as well.'" Humane or not, what is so especially "undignified" about rats? What makes them worse, than, for example, cats, deer or wild horses?
Asphyxiation via C02 is an absolutely HORRIBLE way to die, regardless of the creature. There's a reason Carbogen (C02/Oxygen mix) is used to induce anxiety to test out anxiolytics. I mean I get that they need to solve the infestation problem but can't we choose a method that isn't also a completely inhumane method?
They carry disease, eat infrastructure, chew holes in your house, shit and pee on your stuff, chew holes in your stuff, eat and contaminate your food, and many more things I can't fit into the margin of this book.
Maybe someone should get them to watch Apollo 13.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
They still haven't shaken off the stigma of the bubonic plague. But somehow cats have gotten away with schizophrenia for all these years.
Was the bubonic plague started by cats, deer or wild horses? Silly Op...
"Humane or not, what is so especially "undignified" about rats? What makes them worse, than, for example, cats, deer or wild horses?"
The author of the summary has obviously never had a rat infestation. They can swim, dig several feet down, chew through concrete, plastic, wood, drywall, and otherwise go to amazing destructive measures to get to a heat or food source. Unlike mice, keeping your food in the cupboard or Tupperware containers is useless as they chew right through them, and destroy your home's foundation while they are at it. No, rats are not at all like wild horses, cats, or deer. Rats are a special kind of hell.
If you need an ecological reason. The destructive urban rats are an invasive species, not native to North America. We brought them here - and I for one applaud every effort to get rid of them.
Cats, deer, and wild horses generally won't climb walls and crawl into your house. And they don't share rats' long history of spreading disease and eating grain from storage containers. Deer are food. Horses can be tamed and used to do valuable work. Cats can be tamed and used to protect grain from rodents.
Rats are very clean animals.
Except, you know, for:
lymphocytic choriomeningitis ...but except for those, VERY CLEAN!
bubonic plague
typhus
hantavirus
leptospirosis
rat-bite fever (it's a real thing; look it up)
salmonellosis
Colorado tick fever
cutaneous leishmaniasis
No one is trying to kill your pets. Rats are filthy and violent. They destroy food, spread disease, and even hurt the animals we WANT to keep around and well cared for. Varmints are going to be killed, if you don't do that you don't even have a civilization.
You definitely speak like someone who has never had to deal with an actual infestation, or thought much about that situation much.
> If there's a bug, I catch it and release it outside
What if there's fifty bugs? What if there's a hundred bugs and a dozen mice? Someone is keeping your apartment free of bullshit parasitic creatures that spread disease and filth. It's not you, apparently, but someone is doing the fucking job out of your sight.
> falls back into normal air
They need a gas that sinks, though.
> Fleas.
No, rats. The fleas are just a vector to get it from rats to people. The fleas come with the rats.
When I was a kid, I used to help my grandfather try to control moles around his cattle. Cattle, horses, etc. would step into the entrance to the mole's burrow and break a leg.
Were you able to help all those moles with their tiny broken legs?
I really do not think there is a solution that involves not killing them. If you stopped killing rats for 4 months there would literally be something like a hundred times as many rats as there were before. They would explode out of the sewers and eat small children and babies in their cribs. Their ability to reproduce exponentially would mean that every edible morsel of food in the area, whether human, pet, or more generic foodstuff, would necessarily be converted into more rats within a few years time.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...I agree with nuking them. Living (voluntarily) in the country (North Georgia USA) I've come to very much appreciate the variety of life and their interactions, and I very much try to not screw with that to the degree possible. However...when the rats chew through my AC duct work and invade my living space, I kill the fuckers. I've drowned them, stomped them with boots and never felt an iota of the guilt of an errant daddy-longlegs caught in a bad spot.
What if there's fifty bugs? What if there's a hundred bugs and a dozen mice? Someone is keeping your apartment free of bullshit parasitic creatures that spread disease and filth. It's not you, apparently, but someone is doing the fucking job out of your sight.
And, it's probably a cat. Which directly answers one of the questions posed in the summary.
I have had pet rats too, but there's a big difference between a pet rat and a wild rat. I've had wild rats in my attic. They'll chew up wires, start fires and destroy everything with urine and poop. Currently I use a trap that electrocutes them. All the insulation under a low roof in part of my house was destroyed by them and their urine got into everything.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
It's not quite that simple. What works will for pigs does not work well for all animals. I use a number of animal models, including mice and rats, in research studies. CO2 asphyxiation is the currently preferred method for mice and rats for humane euthanasia, provided the exposure concentration is kept low. Argon has been shown to induce aversion in rats (as an indicator of pain), while N2 exposure has had mixed results in varied studies. It's possible N2 is more humane, if the mix was correct, but that is far from clear to me, and I am roughly familiar with current best practices and research (yes, there is research on the most humane way to kill animals).
Of course, what is done in a controlled lab environment is distinct from dropping a brick of CO2 into a warren. Extremely high concentrations (>40% or so if I recall correctly) of CO2 can induce burning sensation, while lower concentrations induce unconsciousness without apparent aversion in rodents. I'm really not clear on exactly it would happen in an uncontrolled environment, but it is far from clear to me the N2 would be a better option.
There are better ways. When I had some yellow jackets move in, I blasted their nesting area with cinnamon powder. Apparently, they like the smell about as much as humans like a garbage dump.
As for termites, yeah, sometimes you have to resort to poison. It's about a measured response, not no response.
House centipedes. The grey-brown kind with lots of long thin legs.
They're completely harmless to humans, even kinda cute for a bug, and are voracious predators against virtually all the home-infesting insects that we dislike, including termites, cockroaches and nigh-indestructible bedbugs. They can even become kind of friendly as they mature through their seven-year lifespan, if you're into befriending your "guard dogs".
I'm not above squishing particularly annoying bugs, but fostering a population of human-benign predators is far more effective, and controls potential infestations long before you even notice you've been invaded.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Funny thing then that it's years later and the yellow jackets never returned.
Interestingly, it seems that fear causes us to give off a scent that infuriates bees and wasps. If you are personally sensitive, it's understandable, but of not, try to overcome your fear and you'll find that they ignore you.
I've dealt with rodents more often than I'd like. I've used quite a few different methods to catch them.
- Poisons are horrible. Plus you sometimes end up with decomposing animals in places you can't easily get to. Don't do this.
- Old-fashioned classic snap traps work, mostly. Occasionally I've had mice go for the bait at an odd angle and get pinned alive, though. And rat snap traps are just too dangerous if you have kids or pets. Also, once I had a rat set a mouse trap off. I heard this horrible squeal and went out there to find a rat sitting stunned, next to the trap. At that point your only option is to club the thing to death.
- The so-called "better mouse traps" (plastic re imaginings of the classic mouse trap) aren't better. I've had rodents manage to extricate themselves from those things. They do work well on smaller mice or smaller rats.
My current preferred method is using live traps - the ones which are open at both ends. Then, once I've caught something, I drop the entire trap into a large plastic basin filled with water.
#DeleteChrome
Remember that one time when rats killed off half of Europe?
In hindsight, providing rats with guns, knives, and ammunition wasn't the brightet idea Europeans ever came up with...
#DeleteChrome
The government does that job because the last time we used a private contractor, he stole all the children.
'It's more environmentally friendly, and it's very humane on the rodents as well.'"
"Very humane"? Seriously? I don't have a problem with them taking measures to kill pests but suffocation isn't exactly what I would call humane. Necessary maybe but let's not pretend that they're doing something nice or pleasant to the rats.