UV LEDs and DIY pest control: The practical results
The Streamlight TwinTask 3C UV LED arrived (ordered from Amazon for $33) and was promptly put to use seeing where rats and mice had their little rodent runs getting into the attic. (Quick summary from the previous post: Rats and mice tend to leave trails of urine, which fluoresces under UV light.) It was definitely a case, as Steve H. said in the comments for that post, of ignorance being bliss: Under the eaves of the house was a fine web of rat pee-trails, where the little rodents crawl about on the stucco finish looking for openings. But there was no clear trail leading to an opening, and the same was true inside the attic – just lots of meandering trails. This was not the smoking gun evidence I had hoped for that would point to an entry point, and thus where to put the bait, but it was information about their habits, at least.
As you can kinda see from the photo, the flashlight has a ring of 6 UV LEDs that surround a single Xenon white light in the center. It’s handy to scout around with the UV light and then switch to the bright white light as needed. And the relatively low-power UV LEDs were good enough for rat tracking.
For more on UV LEDs, here’s the article by Cary Eskow of Avnet that summarizes some of their characteristics and applications – this is the article mentioned by Bill McC, again in the previous post’s comments. The article refers to Seoul Semiconductor’s products, the Seoul’s S265 and S255 high-power UVC LEDs (265 nm and 255 nm), which you can find more about here. [Sorry, can’t find that link. This shouldn’t be that hard…]
OK, much though I love them, enough about LEDs and a quick summary about rat control experiences.
1) Rat bait works pretty well. Reader Mike McJimsey was concerned about poisoned rats dying in the attic or walls: The solution here is to use a bait like D-Con which causes the rodents to leave the house looking for water. Fortunately, I’ve seen no sign that cats or dogs eat the ailing rats and are then sickened in turn.
2) Rat bait doesn’t seem to work under a real rat infestation which the neighborhood is undergoing right now. Or, it could be that only the smart rats are left.
3) The information gained from using a UV light to look for rat trails was mostly negative information: I learned there was no obvious entry point to the attic that should be closed off. On the other hand, this information pointed to a previously unconsidered possibility: It sounds like the rats are the attic, but maybe they’re actually slithering under the tiles.
4) A ratting dog is a good option. Neighbors down the street paid an exterminator several hundred buck to no avail. Then they got one of those little rat terriers from the pound, and she’s really made a dent in the population. (Our dog, a shepherd mutt, only does ground squirrels.)
5) A brief aside (in what is already a very rambling post…): I was prepared for blog commenters to berate me for killing small creatures – I’ve seen such comments on several gardening sites, speaking out in defense of gophers. Defending gophers is almost incomprehensible to me, but hey, if gophers have their defenders, rats probably do too.
Bellhop commented:
Bill commented:
MarcS commented:
NigelB commented:
desert rat commented:
desert rat commented:
RonW commented:
Sakamochi commented:
desert rat commented:
Alan commented:
sakamochi commented:
