Feeling frustrated with the rat traps you are using to catch rats across your little home? Well, you are not alone, my friend. These pesky little rodents are pretty hard to catch, even if you use them for months. They create an annoying nuisance all over the house besides carrying fatal diseases. They are hard to eradicate even with the help of pest control professionals. So how do you catch these cunning and dangerous pests? And Why Rats are hard to trap? Let’s find out.
We’ll also talk about some best practices that will increase your chance of catching and keeping the rodent population at your home/neighborhood in check. So Let’s get started.
Why Rats Are Hard to Trap
Let’s check why even after several efforts, you couldn’t trap these pesky little devils. There are primarily 5 reasons that make the rats harder to trap. Let’s check them out.
Body Size
First of all, Rats are different from mice. If you were using traditional spring/cage traps, there is a great possibility that they were not the right size. Very few people can tell the difference, and most of them use mouse traps to catch rats. That’s a rookie mistake.
Whenever we see something furry and icky, we assume that it’s a mouse and start setting traps everywhere. But due to their longer body size (7-10 inches), rats can reach longer and get away without triggering the traps. Mousetraps aren’t effective on rats and vice versa. Using the wrong trap decreases our chance of success. The same goes for an outdoor trap as well.
Different Diet Preference
The next part is the bait we’re using. We generally use foods like cheese, pet food, or peanut butter. But the thing is, different species of rats eat very different types of food. The diet preference changes with the food source that is the closest to the rat’s home. Now a rat with a plant-based food preference will not be attracted by cheese, am I wrong?
Now it’s not like that you can’t change their favorite food. But it takes a bit of time. That is why your bait for traps has become useless. It’s not like the rat in your house developed a trap shyness, okay?
Clever Thinking Capability
These pesky little pests are cunning. They are afraid of everything new, spatially within their territory. If something new enters their environment, it’s natural to assume that they’ll leave the new object alone for a couple of days.
They have an excellent sense of what’s happening around them. That’s one reason your rodent baits are being ignored, and you are getting pissed off seeing not a single trap was triggered. The only quick way to get rid of this annoying and dangerous family of rodents is to hire a pest control company.
Cautious Travel Habit
Not only are rats cautious when they eat, but they also follow an intelligent and cautious travel habit. You won’t usually see a rat running through the middle of the room where it is most likely to get caught. Instead, they keep scurrying along walls and fences, making trapping them a lot harder. That’s why you won’t get any signs of rats until there is an entire family of rats living under the same roof as you.
They even can get to such places that are nearly impossible for you to reach without help. This is another reason the rat populations keep increasing in number.
Excessive Breeding
The main reason the rat population grows quickly is the high breed number. These tiny breeding machines can reproduce every 21 days. You may be able to catch a single or two rodents with your glue traps, but there is a family still growing somewhere. And before you know it, all traps of your home become outnumbered. Just a single family of sewer rats take dozens of traps.
While you try your hardest to catch one or two with your glue traps/snap traps, those cunning rodents keep procreating, making your problem even worse.
Some Tips to Trap Rats Effectively
Now that you know why your traps weren’t working let’s go through some effective tips on increasing your chance of catching these rodents and making your family safe.
Be Creative with The Trap
Now that you’ve known why your traditional traps don’t work, it’s time to be a bit creative. You have to place the rat traps in the right place and condition. Usually, positioning rat traps along a wall and in a low-light setting will work better. You can also use a shoebox to lure the curious rat in and trap it there. Using the right-sized trap will increase your odds even further. If you don’t have a problem dealing with dead rodents, we suggest using electronic rat traps for indoor use as they are efficient and convenient.
Use Protection
No matter what you do, taking protection should always be the top priority. Though we don’t suggest using poisonous food as bait, you should use protective gloves when dealing with rodent baits, dead rodents, or rodent traps. This has several benefits, including confiscating your smell and helping you stay protected. Use disposable gloves if you don’t have access to high-quality rubber gloves. If you touch any trap without gloves, try to wash your smell off with hot water before setting it. This will increase your chance of catching the rodent without any risk.
Know Their Diet
We’ve known before that the diet preference of rats varies depending on the distance between their home and the source of food. That is why we have to learn their diet preference or try to change their preference. Usually, if there is a lot of new food, it’ll take some time for the rats to switch and adapt to the new environment. Try out a variety of food as rat bait and wait to see the rat’s action. As we’ve avoided secondary poisoning, you can try out any common foods in your trap that can lure rats.
Trick Them
As rats are cunning, we also have to get smarter if we want to control the rat population. Once something new enters the environment, the rats avoid that for a couple of days. So place an open trap here and there. This will make the rats comfortable with the traps, tricking them. If you don’t want to kill the rats, you can use high-tech methods to repel them out of your home. And use as many traps as you need. And if you are okay with killing, there are a number of smart tools you can use. But the best way would be to keep these pesky little rodents from entering your home in the first place.
Over to You
Hopefully, by now, you have a pretty solid idea about why despite all of your effort, the stubborn rats never seemed to leave your house. With the help of all the valuable information, you just gathered, kicking out these little assholes from your house will become a bit easier.
No More Today. I hope this article proves to be helpful for those who are, like you, at their wit’s limit on why rats are harder to trap. Please don’t forget to share your opinions and experiences with us in the comment section below. I wish you all a rodent-free safe weekend. Thanks for reading this far.Good luck.