Ratastic News Week -“Rocket Fuel, Regularity and Rats” Edition

David Bennett

Ratastic Newsflash for May 26th, 2019—“Rocket Fuel, Regularity and Rats” Edition

Last week’s quiz question Who is Jack Black ( Not the Actor)

Answer: In the mid 19^thcentury, Jack Black, the rat catcher for Queen Victoria, found several color variations of the brown rat and domesticated those he caught. Eager owners of his pet rats included the Queen herself and its rumored Beatrix Potter.

This week’s quiz question: Who’s the greatest ratter ever? Who do rat dogs today have to measure up to?

Hong Kong Rat Infestation Not Only Brings More Cases of Hepatitis E, But Proves that Trap Boxes are More Effective Than Cage Traps.

An infestation of rats in Hong Kong that shows rats climbing up more than 20 floors on apartment buildings via pipes running up the outside of the buildings not only has brought more cases of Hepatitis E, for a total of five cases since September of last year, but also shows that cages with only one opening baited with sweet potatoes aren’t as effective as trap boxes which have two openings and a snap trap in the middle. The South China Morning Post reports““Rats won’t go into those traps because they see there is no way out,” [rodent expert Gary Yam Wing-keung] Yam said. “Also, they are not attracted to the smell of sweet potatoes after a day or two. They’d rather forage for food waste from restaurants nearby. “At Ma Hang Chung Road in Kowloon City, where one patient lived, sweet potatoes in two cages and a packet of rat poison hanging from a drainpipe were left untouched on Wednesday morning. Yam said most pest control firms used newer trap boxes laid with poisonous bait with two open ends, as opposed to cages, which only had one entrance. Boxes had a much higher success rate, at 70 per cent, he said.” He also said that officials need to crack down on the root of the problem —restaurants throwing out food into back alleys.

We sell commercial grade traps tunnel boxes to set the traps in—Choose from Cage, Wooden or Ammo can tunnels which ensures protecting none target animals from interacting with the Fenn trap. Using traps remains an environmentally friendly an effective method when application warrants as uses no poisons which can impact none targeted animals and more when not managed or deployed correctly.

We were humbled and surprised by a video reviewed on Shawn Woods “Mouse Trap Monday” of the MK4 Fenn Trap

LINK TO MOUSE TRAP MONDAYS SITE

Highly recommend tuning into Shawn’s site, in-depth knowledge on

multitude of different traps.

Press image to watch

Long Island School Closes Due to the Smell from Decomposing Rats

Deer Park High School on Long Island is suffering from the smell of dead rats—the result of fumigation of rats in their rodent control effort. The smell is so bad,

students have circulated a petition asking school authorities to close the school until it’s cleaned up. ABC7.com reports: “The school principal said rodents were encountered in various areas of the high school, and that extermination procedures were completed while school was closed for spring recess during the week of April 22. “Currently, we are dealing with an unpleasant odor that we believe is the result of our exterminator’s efforts,” the principal said in a message to the school community. The principal said select exterior doors are being left open during the day to provide appropriate fresh air and ventilation to the affected areas. Security guards are standing at the open doors at all times. The students say it smells like vomit, possibly a mixture of the fumigant along with the decomposition of the rats—not a healthy situation for anybody. CBSLocal adds“Does the stench in a suburban school pose a health hazard? Suffolk County’s health commissioner says no, but students say the odors from vermin and exterminators are making it tough to study. Some students at Deer Park High School became unnerved by an announcement of rodents in their building. Some students complained of fumes from extermination materials, and certain doors and windows were opened to vent classrooms. They could consider looking at industrialized commercial grade traps with anchor chain, preventing rodent and traps ending up in wall cavity.

Coffee Fed to Rats Provides Insight as to Why Coffee Drinkers Poop

Ever wonder why you seem to need to “go” right after you drink coffee? Rats are providing insight into this phenomenon in a study done by the University of Texas-Galveston Medical Branch at Galveston as to how coffee affects the gut. Gizmodo reports that researchers turned their lab into a mini rat coffee shop and fed the rats a tiny cup of joe (both decaf and regular) for three days straight—then they gave the rats a probe (ew) and a physical examination. “focusing on the muscles that contract and help guide food (and eventually waste) through the gut. Lastly, they also studied how muscle tissues from the gut directly reacted to coffee in the lab. Their results were clear: muscles in the small and large intestine were more able to contract post-coffee, meaning things could move faster along the gut. “Coffee has this stimulating effect on gut motility, and that is not related to caffeine at all. We could see this even with decaffeinated coffee, so it’s caffeine-independent,” lead author Xuan-Zheng Shi, an associate professor in internal medicine at the university, told Gizmodo over the phone.” Scientists don’t know how coffee affects the microbiomes in the gut—there could be an antibacterial effect, or coffee could be killing the good bacteria—but one thing is clear. Coffee keeps you regular and it’s tastier than prunes!