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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

As someone who needed some rodenticide, what is actually needed is not restriction on these poisons, but rather very authoritative sites with advice on the best stuff to get, that is actually safe and effective.

It's surprisingly hard to research what poisons are actually good to use, you'll either gets sites shilling stuff that completely doesn't work, but is "eco friendly" (for example "Rat-X"), and sites that simply give you the "most effective", i.e. most poisonous (like the ones in this article).

What's needed are sites explaining, for an average person, what's they should be getting. People aren't trying to kill birds, they just are getting really bad advice on what to buy.

Bromethalin is a good choice, if you use a bait station (it has no antidote, so always use a bait station, never just tie the blocks somewhere).

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Eh, I'm not sure I agree. I think the natural tendency for people is to think "My case is different, I need the strongest tool for this job!". People stock their medicine cabinets with Extra Strength Tylenol instead of regular, or buy anti-bacterial soap instead of normal soap, because it's easier to go straight for the big guns.

Even in these small cases the information is tremendously easy to find and people don't look for it and/or care about it. The consequences of the wrong Tylenol or anti-bacterial soap are small comparatively, but when the consequences of bad choices get in the way of ecological conservation for no good reason, it seems like that's prime territory for regulation.

No, they aren't thinking "my case is different," they are expecting the market to be flooded with ineffective products marketed as "safe alternatives." Because it is. They are grasping at any piece of information they can find to fight the overwhelming tidal wave of ineffective non-solutions.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t care what’s recommended for their needs, because they just want the strongest stuff imaginable. Particularly when they’re pissed off at pests.

There’s a good number of people who’d happily buy flying murder robots to blow rats up with missiles if they were readily available and affordable.

Get the old wood-and-wire snap traps. The design is centuries old, and they work. They make them rat-size, too.

I’ve used the wooden and wire, and they do work. Setting the small ones I always get a little nervous about my fingers. I saw the rat size ones in the store and yikes..

There's a plastic snap-trap that's easier to set and less risk to your fingers.

They're particularly useful for someone who's older and has muscular or nerve disabilities.

Both the wood and plastic traps are effective in my experience.

I tried the easier to set plastic ones. They're easier to set because the spring is much weaker. The mice have lighting reflexes, and would pull away before the trap could close. Either that, or the spring wasn't strong enough to crush them, and they'd pull out and run away.

Whenever I'd check them, they had tripped, the bait was licked off clean, and there wasn't a mouse hair left.

I don't recall ever having the metal ones trip and not catch the mouse. Once all it caught was some long grey hairs, and I tot quap, dat's a wat. Got da bigger an' badder wat twap version, an' caught da wascally wat.

For someone who really can't functionally set a wooden trap, the difference isn't of degree but is a 1-or-0 situation. There are different manufacturers, the Time's Up or Snap-E have performed well:

https://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/times-up-plastic-mouse-trap/p...

https://www.grainger.com/product/SNAP-E-Plastic-Mouse-Trap-3...

The one weakness I've discovered (recently, as it happens) is that if the target is trapped in such a way that it survives and has freedom of movement to gnaw at the trap, it will chew the plastic shell off the bar, and other exposed plastic parts (much of the trip-lever in the case I have in mind).

I present my experience as an option. The wood-and-wire traps are less expensive and quite effective as well IME. They're harder to set, however.

I've seen bait thefts with both versions. One learns to be creative in how and where the bait is applied, and sets multiple traps for redundency. The trapper only has to be lucky once, the mouse, every time.

No experience with rats, fortunately.

A wat trap must be quite large:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-M201-Rat-trap-Pack/dp/B01N6IM6...

I know their littler bretheren well.

most people absolutely do not read documentation, imo you should need to pass a license exam to use certain substances like bromethalin

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