Nice Rack (AKA: Keeping it clean!)

When was the last time you rotated your bait? Most folks are fairly used to this question. We know that many of our pests, especially German cockroaches and bed bugs, exhibit both resistance and aversion to many of our common insecticides. Professionals are used to rotating cockroach and ant baits, and even pretty good about rotating liquid residuals.

Nearly every time I’m called into an issue and I ask, “When’s the last time you rotated the rodenticide?” I get some weird looks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we use Product X.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Can I phone a friend?”

And my personal pet peeve: “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

Why, if we are so accustomed to and accepting of rotating our other baits, do people continue to use the same rodenticide for years, decades even? And then wonder why there are problems?

Here’s my current situation. I was called into a warehouse that had a rat capture. Yep, they did identify the rodent as a Norway rat so points for them. Going into a situation like this, I like to get some of the paperwork ahead of time so I can go through service reports and get a bit of the history of the site. That did not happen this time and that’s okay.

I get to the site, and of course I’m looking at the outside as I drive in to see if there are obvious conducive conditions like trash, overgrown vegetation, bait stations, etc. Everything looks okay from the two sides I see. We’ve got a good start!

I get a bit more info when I get there from the folks at the site and they tell me about the history of the site and what has happened (to their knowledge) with this recent issue. This is when I ask about the documentation and a few other clarifying questions. Go figure, it looks like they’ve been using Rodenticide X for …. well…. let’s just say a while.

The next question I have is about the bait consumption. Is there one side of the building or one area where consumption is higher?* This would indicate heavier pressure or a recent change in pressure. This is how we can focus inspections and go to high risk or high pressure areas first and work our way out. Bait consumption has been near zero. That could mean two things. It could mean there is very minimal activity on the outside. Or it could mean that rodents are now averse to the bait. This means I am missing valuable information that could help solve the issue.

I’m left with inspecting the inside. The site folks do have great info on where an original sighting may have been and the area where the rat was caught. Naturally, we head to that area, in the racks, to start the inspection. The site has also done an amazing job with all the pallets that were in the area. They took everything out from the racks, inspected it, and re-racked it in what they deemed a “clean” area. Fantastic, points for them!

What I’m left with is an empty floor with pallets on the second and third upper racks. And the floor is clean. Spotless clean, I would eat off this floor! That also means that I have no evidence of droppings. Here’s what I did find. Little footprints. On the just barely dusty horizontal and diagonal racks. It’s evident the rat was moving around from where it was feeding on the product in the pallet. This makes sense because rats need a daily source of water and the product it was feeding on was dry. It had to venture out to find some liquid. Now we have an area of activity (the rat had been captured and removed already) to further monitor.

In situations like this, people want to know how it got there. Sometimes we can find a nice clear answer. Maybe it was caught in a trap by a door and we know that door had been propped open. Maybe it came off a truck and was caught by the cameras running in. In this situation, it’s not definite. In all probability, it came in on the pallet it was living in. (There’s lots of other evidence I’m leaving out; I can’t give you all my secrets!)

Even with all preventative measures in place, things like this can happen. It may be a food warehouse, a hospital, resort, grocery store, or even a home. It may have come from outside or it could have been delivered in. Those outside bait stations can provide a great deal of info, and we know both resistance and aversion happen in rats and mice. Be prepared before it gets to the racks.

And contact us to help you prevent these issues and solve them fast when they do occur!

*YES!!! The percentage of bait consumed should be recorded when stations are serviced. I’m not saying it should be weighed out down to the micro gram; a simple 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% is enough to provide a wealth of information to add to the story. You can fight me on this, I will not yield!