Where's my ratty?

September 20, 2005 8:22 AM

How do I kill a rat?

I have caught a rat under a bucket with a rock on top. It is not very lively, but still alive.
It is illegal for me to release the animal alive. The council rat exterminator has a two week waiting list.
Last year I caught a rat and released it, I fear that this is the same one I have caught again. I do not want to release it again for it to return to eat my stored food.
I would like to despatch it without causing undue stress to the animal.
I have been advised not to touch it.
Maybe I should take it to the council and leave it with them?

posted by asok to home & garden (45 comments total)

Can you call the council and ask them what to do with it?

Obviously starving it to death will be highly stressful for it. Rat poison slipped under the bucket? Make a hole in the top and kill it by carbon monoxide poisoning from your car? (I don't know, my mind does strange things sometimes).

Seriously, surely your city council has a recommendation.
posted by gaspode at 8:28 AM on September 20, 2005

Kill it. It's a rat. Unless you're a vegetarian I don't see the suffering argument. Just leave the bucket and wait for it to suffocate. I had an experience with this recently (with photos). Luckily my cat did the dirty work. I felt bad for the rat since it was obviously scared, but ultimately I did not want to deal with anything sneaking around the kitchen again.
posted by letterneversent at 8:31 AM on September 20, 2005

Oh jesus horrible childhood memories of finding a mouse stuck to one of those sticky glue pads and trying to drown it resurfacing.

DON'T DROWN IT.

I would say that rat poison slipped under the bucket is both pretty humane and not too icky.
posted by Juliet Banana at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2005

Drowning is apparently a painless way to die. Oh and antifreeze is pretty effective.
posted by geoff. at 8:35 AM on September 20, 2005

Wouldn't the rat use the opportunity to run out when you lift the bucket? Now that's a scary idea.
posted by letterneversent at 8:36 AM on September 20, 2005

While drowning is a "painless" way to die, things tend to freak out when they know they're dying. If you have a heart, don't try to drown it. Watching it struggle will nearly kill you.

Get some rat poision and slip it under the bucket. There's no worry about it running out, because you're not going to have to lift it too far.

It's humane, quick, and easy. Though a pity. I'm about to get a couple of rats as pets from a local breeder and I'm already turning into a softie about the little buggers.
posted by Imperfect at 8:46 AM on September 20, 2005

In the future, use a rat trap. It is a much larger version of the snap trap used for mice. It works.

The glue traps are horrible. The poor animal really suffers. At least the snap traps provide a quick kill.
posted by onhazier at 8:48 AM on September 20, 2005

Go to the auto store and buy a can of starter fluid (ether.) Soak some paper towels. Throw the rat and the paper towels in a garbage bag. Seal. Wait. Dine.
posted by Loser at 8:57 AM on September 20, 2005

frying pan on the head always did the job for me
posted by juniorbonner at 9:02 AM on September 20, 2005

While rat poison might be convenient it certainly isn't humane. It will work, but there will also be an astonishing ruckus from under the bucket while it runs its course.

Getting it in a confined space and braining it with a heavy object is probably the most humane course, simply for getting it over with.
posted by localroger at 9:23 AM on September 20, 2005

Rat poison is convenient- not humane. It's supposedly really painful.

You said it wasn't very lively- don't you just have a hatchet or something? Jeez. Or, juniorbonner's frying pan ought to work.
posted by small_ruminant at 9:26 AM on September 20, 2005

yeah. what localroger said.
posted by small_ruminant at 9:27 AM on September 20, 2005

Nothing like a hammer or a baseball bat (or a cricket bat) to make sure you do the job right. Swift blunt trauma to the head of a rat delivered by you would = immediate lights out. This is far more humane than suffocating it, poisoning it, or starving it to death.

The antifreeze solution will work I suppose more humanely than the rat poison as well because it will put the critter into a coma and then death. The only problem is that while antifreeze is naturally sweet and tasty, manufacturers add bittering agents to make it unpalatable to humans (as well as dogs that like to lick it off the basement floor).
posted by tweak at 9:38 AM on September 20, 2005

Geez, all those methods are oogy.

I have drowned a mouse or two, and believe you me it makes them seriously unhappy before they croak.

I have tried to use violent trauma (ie, a shovel) to end a mousey life. All I did was bounce the mouse out of the trap its leg was caught in and fuck it up. I saw what I assume was the same mouse a few days later in my kitchen, walking in jerky circles and falling over a lot. I assure you that watching this and knowing you did it causes some singularly unpleasant feelings.

Assuming the bucket is big enough that the rat can't escape from it, whatcha want to do is this:

(1) Slide a board under the bucket
(2) Flip the bucket over
(3) Take the bucket to a running car and put it right under the tailpipe. I've done this to mice and it's a couple of gasping shudders and then death, all inside 5--10 seconds.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:39 AM on September 20, 2005

If you can get a bottle of ether from a pharmacy or lab supply, soak some cotton balls and stick them in the bucket. If you don't want to lift the bucket, soak a linen sheet and slide it under. Rat goes to sleep and dies. Just to make sure, once the rat is sleeping, wad up some sheet and soak with ether, and cover the bucket well with a plastic bag or something. The rat is now dead without much pain.

I've killed thousands of rats this way, literally. Don't ask me about my job history.
posted by zaelic at 10:08 AM on September 20, 2005

Okay, I'm not sure what rat poisons you all are using, but at the hardware store I shop at, I've only ever seen bottles marked "humane" & "painless". I didn't know they even sold a brand that was guaranteed to cause a violent, painful death.

That's rather disgusting.

Although I have to say that in light of the wide varieties of rat poison out there, go with the ether. Please?
posted by Imperfect at 10:16 AM on September 20, 2005

Another option is to get it into a plastic bag, tie the bag, then dash the bag as hard as you can against some cement (rock, stone, etc). Basically it's the "brain it with a large object approach" but the rat gets a free "rollercoaster" before hand. But seriously, it kills them quickly, without making a mess all over the place.
posted by KirTakat at 10:17 AM on September 20, 2005

Borrow a neighbor's cat, lift the bucket, and enjoy a few minutes of good, old-fashioned fun.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:29 AM on September 20, 2005

As to the advice to smack it with something, I once hit a rat with a over the head swing of a shovel, I swear it flattened out, then popped back and ran off. How about this for an over the top method, generate some CO2 with baking soda and vinegar (or dry ice) and pipe it in. Maybe drill a hole in the top of the bucket for a hose, then duct tape the hose into a soda bottle with the baking soda and vinegar. If you are out of city limits you could shoot it (possibly right through the bucket).
posted by 445supermag at 10:45 AM on September 20, 2005

Live near a park? Why not release the rat there? Failing that, how about the alley behind the Council offices?

Then get a cat or two.
posted by words1 at 10:56 AM on September 20, 2005

You could always pin it and crush its head with your bootheel. One stomp shopping.
posted by sciurus at 11:31 AM on September 20, 2005

I say drown it out of sight, so you don't have to see what it's doing. You can at least pretend it died peacefully, and there's no blood and guts. Here's what you do:

1) Assemble supplies. You have the rat in the bucket. You need a piece of carboard and a length of rubber hose (not long, maybe 2 feet. Also, go ahead and fill your bathtub.

2) Slide cardboard under bucket. Now you have a rat in a box.

3) Keeping the bucket upside down, push it (it will be hard) all the way to the bottom of the tub. At this point, there will still be air, so that rat will be swimming around (if you've removed the cardboard), but still breathing.

4) Slide hose under and into the bucket and up all the way to the top (actually, the bottom of the bucket, but the bucket is upside down). Pull the other end of the hose out of the tub, above the water line. Now you have a rat in a box full of water, and you can't see it.

5) Walk away, come back in 10 or 20 minutes. Dispose of dead rat.
posted by dsword at 12:22 PM on September 20, 2005

I've personally been the harbinger of death for a number of rats (not that I feel good about it, just part of the job description). The most humane option for the rat is actually decapitation. The best evidence we have is that a quick decap is milliseconds of pain followed by instant death, much less traumatic than the slow "oh crap I've been injected / being suffocated / etc. and am going to die" that happens with most other methods. With a decap, the rat doesn't have enough time to figure out what is happening before the head is off and it is over.

The downside for you is that a decap involves handling the rat: Heavy leather workgloves will protect against bites, and hold on tight (use a much firmer grip that you think you need to, trust me). The other problem is that a decap is necessarily messy, and will involve a headless rat that has a still-functioning heart and a good supply of blood, if you get my drift. (Think the Yakuza boardroom scene in Kill Bill.)

Of course this option is only viable if you have access to a decapitation device (a hand-axe or butcher knife might work, if you have a firm grip and good aim: you want to hit the rat, not the hand holding the rat!). Blunt head trauma might be easier to accomplish but not necessarily as humane.

CO₂ asphyxiation might sound nicer, but I've witnessed it before - gasping for breath, eyes tearing up, etc. - it's not pretty and not very humane. Rat poison? The chemicals have names like "Warfarin" and such - these are not friendly ways to go. Usually they work by causing massive internal bleeding or some similarly creepy mechanism.

Potassium chloride injections will do the trick quite neatly by nearly immediately stopping neural and muscle actvity. This is probably the most humane way to go outside of a quick decap. Plus, unlike many injectable substances that will cause death, KCl isn't a controlled substance. Many drug stores have needles for use by diabetics that can be used to administer an injection. Where you get the KCl though I can't say, unless you have a friend who works in a lab of some sort.

Sorry to be a bit morbid here, but this is sort of a morbid question. Normally I'm quite fond of rats.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:36 PM on September 20, 2005

If you can get a bottle of ether from a pharmacy or lab supply, soak some cotton balls and stick them in the bucket.

See, Loser's suggestion above, modify with the cotton ball idea. Starter Fluid is Ether (often called Ethel in the automotive world). The rat will get so high on huffing whippets that its brain will forget to breathe and keep its heart beating. Seemingly violent, but the brain will have shut down so it's painless.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:40 PM on September 20, 2005

I had a mouse caught in a glue trap once, and the most humane way I could think of was to take it outside, stand on a chair with a cinder block, hold the block over my head, and, uh, lower the boom, so to speak. It went from mouse to mouse pancake in nothing flat, ha-ha - can't have suffered, there wasn't time.

Having the critter in a bucket complicates this.

The ether and carbon monoxide suggestions sound good. But never underestimate the power of heavy things with flat bottoms (important!) plus gravity. Make sure you get something heavy - you want to do the job right. I don't really recommend whacking around with a shovel or hatchet or whatever.

As for water: please note that rats swim very well.
posted by jellicle at 1:03 PM on September 20, 2005

As for water: please note that rats swim very well.

Not when in a sack full of rocks.

Maybe you should feed it and then take it swimming within 20 minutes.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:14 PM on September 20, 2005

Well, I stand by the ether treatment - we used to kill 600 lab rats at a time in a large University Hospital lab. Dump 20 rats in a garbage can, pop in the ether balls, cap the can, and wait ten minutes before dumpoing another 20 in on top of them.

But again, sometimes we would run out of ether. Or worse, a couple of super rats would survive the treatment and climb to the top of the pile of rat corpses. Now, these were lab rats, mind you, not wild rats, and they had been smoking all kinds of marijuana for months. My boss wouldn't give me any advice on what to do. So there were two options:

1. Baseball pitch them against a brick wall - it worked fine but sometimes was messy.

2. Hold rat in left hand. Using right hand, punch the rat in the face. Quicker, neater, faster.

Mind you this was back around 1978, and Harvard University was paying minimum wage of about $2.00 for full time rat wrangler work.

Luckily, I don't belong to any religion that considers any of this a sin.
posted by zaelic at 2:32 PM on September 20, 2005

A) Starter fluid sounds good. Alternatively, you could go with an ammonia/bleach mixture. Just a little bit in a cup, slip it under the bucket (best to have the bucket outside or next to a window for your own safety). Should be pretty painless.

B) I also like the idea of chucking the thing over a fairly high cliff or drop of some sort, say 150 feet. Depending on how you look at it, then, it's really god that's killing the rat, by way of gravity. Also, I doubt the rat will know what's going on. I wonder what the average rat's terminal velocity is.

C) Place rat in plastic bag, put in front of wheel of car, drive to store. The nice feature of this method is that you can buy whatever you need for cleanup while at the store.

D) If you've never played with a potato cannon, now is the perfect time to give it a try.
posted by dsword at 3:46 PM on September 20, 2005

Anoxia. If I remember my welding classes correctly, Argon will replace CO2 in the bloodstream, and will not trigger the "I'm suffocating" response, which is a function of CO2 % in the blood. That's why it's so dangerous to use in an enclosed space - you cannot tell that you are sucumbing to it. It is heavier than air - it'll pool in yer rat bucket, and is available cheap from your local industrial gas supplier.
posted by Triode at 4:10 PM on September 20, 2005

I've caught a rat with my hands. If you squeeze it hard, it'll die pretty quickly. Wear heavy gloves--I used welding gloves. After a couple minutes, put the more-or-less dead rat in a glass jar with some solvent. Leave the jar hidden at the back of your tool cabinet.
posted by ryanrs at 4:39 PM on September 20, 2005

O/T: There's a rat & mouse poison in France called "Souris-cide". I always thought that was the best brand name ever.
posted by blag at 4:42 PM on September 20, 2005

Do you know anyone with a snake? Maybe you could Craigslist for one. Not sure how you'd arrange getting the rat into the snake, but that's between you and your snake-owning friend.
posted by srah at 4:46 PM on September 20, 2005

One time my snap trap caught a mouse on the tail. Now that was one lucky mouse, so I wasn't going to brain him. I tossed him in a plastic storage container and fed and watered him. His tail healed. He was very scared to be out in the "open" so I gave him cardboard tubes and boxes to hide in. Eventually he figured out an FPS-style jumping puzzle and escaped, but apparently he told all his mouse friends about his incarceration since he was the last I saw while before I had a mouse every few weeks.

I sorta doubt that would work with a wild rat though.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:47 PM on September 20, 2005

Stick him in the freezer. It's suposed to be a pretty humane way to go.
posted by deanj at 5:04 PM on September 20, 2005

B) I also like the idea of chucking the thing over a fairly high cliff or drop of some sort, say 150 feet...

I've heard rats are surprisingly good at surviving extreme falls.
posted by musicinmybrain at 5:27 PM on September 20, 2005

I'd probably gas it.

Having killed a fair amount of animals in my day I'd say this is the best. Shooting it is definitely not fun, especially with such a small animal. Blood loss is no good. Drowning is depressing. Beheading works okay for chickens, but they tend to move around a bit, this would be hard with a rat, plus you might injure yourself. Antifreeze and rat poison I've never done, but something inside me says it's wrong - perhaps because I've often killed animals to eat them.

We used to gas things we 'humanely' wanted to set down. We'd setup a box, hook the car up to the box with a tube, connect to the tailpipe and run it until they die a slow painless death.
posted by sled at 6:11 PM on September 20, 2005

caution live frogs:
KCl can be found in almost any supermarket. It's sold as a sodium-free salt substitute. Usually it's straight KCl plus a small amount of de-caking additives. Cheap, too.
posted by ryanrs at 6:24 PM on September 20, 2005

Buy a piece of dry ice at the grocery store and shove it under the bucket. Wait.
posted by majick at 8:48 PM on September 20, 2005

I always thought that CO₂ was bad (in mammals, the reflex from suffocating isn't from the lack of oxygen but too much CO₂) but at the animal care unit, when we sacrifice mice we use CO² to put them to sleep before using scissors to sever their spinal cord at the base of the neck.

The mice don't seem to suffer (they look like they get sleepy and, well, go to sleep), however. Never could get a decent answer for this, though.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:14 PM on September 20, 2005

There's a rat & mouse poison in France called "Souris-cide". I always thought that was the best brand name ever.

Especially if it's painless.
posted by kindall at 11:17 PM on September 20, 2005

So, asok, how did you kill it, anyway?
posted by zaelic at 4:39 AM on September 21, 2005

Thanks for the many responses, both informative and entertaining.

letterneversent writes "Unless you're a vegetarian I don't see the suffering argument."

Vegetarians have a monopoly on humanity? Can meat eaters not be concerned about animal welfare?

I was favouring the gassing option up until I got the plywood board under the bucket (actually a washing up bowl) and got a look at it, discovering it was a mouse. A small very frightened mouse. My sister had seen its tail (which resulted in an ear-splitting shriek), which is quite long, and that is what had given us the impression that it was a rat. Being a mouse explains how it got past my rat-proof defences (which are now all blocked with cement) and the fact it has not been thrashing around like a cat in a tumble drier, which is why I thought it was not very lively.

As I warned the last rat that a repeat visit would result in its termination I was ready to go all medieval on it, but the mouse is a first time offender and will receive some lenience. All its *LA priviledges* are revoked.

words1 writes "Live near a park?"

I shall indeed be releasing it in the park, where it can vie for a life with all the other wildlife. Also the students are back, so there will be plenty of discarded pizzas and kebabs for it to enjoy.

Let's hope there is not another oportunity to exercise my new-found encyclopedic knowledge of rodent termination methods.
posted by asok at 8:14 AM on September 21, 2005

Hear, hear.
posted by Imperfect at 8:28 AM on September 21, 2005

I can see the headlines already: "PLAGUE TRACED TO RELEASED MOUSE - SAMARITAN SOUGHT BY POLICE"
posted by zaelic at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2005

Yay! This was an unexpected happy ending to such a morbid thread. NowI can imagine an adorable mouse having fun with his mousy friends in a friendly wood, rather that exactly how you snap a rat's neck with your hands.
posted by Juliet Banana at 10:55 AM on September 21, 2005