Bad exterminator joke... an adult mouse can get into the opening the size of a dime...an adult rat, an opening the size of a quarter. So what's the difference between a mouse and a rat? 15 cents....
Lar
Same in Florida. 12 mos. growing season guarantees palm berries and citrus are available. Neatest thing about roof rats was seeing one run to the bottom end of a downspout and hear the critter climb up the inside. I had heard noises by the downspout before, but thought that must be the "down" elevator and trees the "up" elevator :o)
Actually, you can get copper wool, which works the same and won't rust.
Northe
When I had my roof rat problem I found out that rat can chew his quarter sized hole through 3/4" of plywood in about 10 minutes. I plugged a hole and 10 minutes later it was back.
There are a couple of basic species of rats and probably hundreds of sub species. The roof rat that we see most in Florida is smaller than a small squirrel without the bushy tail. The roof rat has a tail longer than the body. I doubt there is really much difference in any practical sense. A squirrel is just a rat with a publicist. You don't want either of them living in your house. They are really "outside" animals that stray inside looking for a home. The nasty rats are the European "Norway" rats. They are the ones that get bigger than a cat and tend to live more where the people are. That is your typical city rat. The problem with all rats is how fast they can make baby rats, usually only limited by the food supply. They can eat damn near anything so that is tough to control. Most ornamental trees and shrubs produce a seed or fruit they will eat. Of course a trash can is a rat buffet. The raccoons and dogs open the can and scatter the trash around, the rats come and clean up the scraps.
Lars is our exterminator. I just took a lot of time to study my enemy. The more you know about pests, the easier it is to control them. You will never eliminate rats, the trick is just to reduce the number and keep them outside. NEVER kill a snake! They eat more rats in your yard than a cat and they don't dig up your flower beds..
BTW I think boric acid is probably the best roach preventer. If they would liberally dust the floor under cabinets in the kitchen before they set them I think your bug problem would be vastly reduced. The same for the stud cavities. Boric acid is not really that toxic to people but you should still keep it sequestered.
True, I took it as a mis-name though since the cat won (grin).
Lots of people who've never seen a real rat, think mice are the same. I got the heebeejeebee's scared outa me in Vladivostok Russia at night once by the real thing. I swear that sucker was over a foot long not counting the tail! There's this underground walkway you go through to get to the main part of town from the ship piers and that was where I saw it.
Cool! I was reading the other's ntes on the roof rats. I'm not familiar with them so it was interesting, especially the post on the one running up the gutter.
Snicker, we got lots of squirrels here. Any openings to the attic here have to be braced inside with heavy metal screeing to keep them out.
Thats what I've seen. On ships, we have rat guards on the lines to keep them from running up. Once a ship gets an infestation, it's horridly hard to get rid of them. Roaches too are really hard.
Sounds like you might be an exterminator so know more than most of us would about such!
Well that would be a yes and no answer with that. If boric acid would be properly applied it can be a good product, but if it is heavily applied it is just a repellent causing insects to bypass where the BA is placed and just show up in places where the dust in not. If it is being used in cabinets because the thought of it being safer than the store bought insecticides BA dust/powder will be 30 to 150 times more toxic than any of the insecticides sold for home use or put out by an exterminator along with no unsightly dust to see.
Lar
Boric acid is used intrnally and for eye wash. Sure it's toxic?
I wouldn't put it in the cabinets, just "dust" it under the cabinet before you set them. The bugs tend to go where you can't see them diring the day and that is where I would treat them. If you are "infected" you need more extensive treatments, even calling in a pro. The trick is to keep down the stragglers before you get an established population.
The nasty roaches are the little ones anyway. (asian and german). The big scary looking "american" cockroach we get in Florida is really fairly easy to kill. They are "palmetto bugs" in the same sense a roof rat is a "palmetto squirrel". They both live in the trees outside and stray into your house if you let them.
I found a web site that said that adult mice have 3-4 inch bodies and 3-4 inch tails. This rodent had a 5 inch body and a 6 inch tail.
-- I don't understand why they make gourmet cat foods. I have known many cats in my life and none of them were gourmets. They were all gourmands!
There is a difference in of toxicity of BA dust sprinkled about for insect control that is at 97%-100% strength and products that just contain a small percentage of BA in there mixtures. When used in eye washes it is at a very low concentration...check the label of a lot of commercial eye washes and you will even see Hydrochloric Acid on the label. :) You might be thinking of Diatamaceous Earth that is fed to cattle to help with worms that is also put out for insects as is BA. It was used a lot at the turn of the 20th century as an antiseptic wash for surgery but was stopped.
A book from 1899 to prove what? Show me something that proves BA is
30-150 times more toxic than ANY pesticide? Perhaps if I sit down and eat spoonfuls straight from the container. I agree with your point about dusting to keep roaches away....They can find the house even if you build mounds with BA, and they can always follow you home from the grocery store :o)On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:38:20 -0800, Daniel Prince
How about a foraging roof rat?
Norminn wrote:
the reference to that old book was not to prove anything but to just point out at one time it was used internally, but I think that practice is long gone.
we'll try this way and any insecticide can be broke down this way... easy enough to find the LD50 of different chemicals on the web, the lower the number the more toxic the substance. I'll use cypermethrin because I know where to find an example of the ld50 of finished product. Cypermethrin is one of the older pyrethroids used in pest control, the newer generation pyrethroids are even more "non insect" friendly at use rates. The ld50 of BA is around 2700mg/kg which is mild and cypermethrin is 250mg/kg which means cypermethrin molecule is over 10 times more toxic than the BA molecule...bad. But cypermethrin is not the insecticide, it is just an active ingredient in the insecticide which I use it at from .1% down to .025%. If you go to the makers site for the Consumers Product Information,
Using the lower rate found on boric acid dust labels (97% strength), if an ounce contains 28350 mgs (rounded up) then an ounce (2 table spoons) of boric acid at 97% has 27499.5 mgs of BA which has a 50% chance of killing 9.9 pound animal. ...amount of mg of BA in an ounce divided by the ld50 of BA (2770)
an ounce of .1% cypermethrin insecticide would contain approx 28.35 mg of cypermethrin in it, which means it would take 8.8 tablespoons to reach it's ld50 of 250. But the ounce of boric is 9.9 times above it's ld50 for just one tablespoon. It would take 87.12 ounces (almost three quarts) of the cypermethrin product to achieve the amount to have a 50% chance of killing a 9.9 lb animal, compared to one ounce for BA. The average amount of insecticide used in a home on a quarterly basis around plumbing, corners, windows etc might be 20-25 ounces.
BA is cheap and easy to use and can be effective, but it is not the safer alternative.
Lar
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Just to put this all in perspective, the LD50 of table salt is somewhere around 4000mg/kg, so while these insecticides are more toxic than table salt, they really aren't all that toxic to mammals.
bad typos bad typos...should be 8.8 ounces not table spoons along with another "ounce" instead of "tablespoon" after that
Lar
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