Rats are intelligent and highly social animals. There are over 65 different species worldwide. There are two types of rats in Germany: the black rat and the brown rat. House rats are among the wild animals threatened with extinction in this country. Under no circumstances should they be confused with the tame pet rats that are often kept as pets.
Rats in the house: Please don’t lay out poison
Rats are usually not welcome guests in the garden – and nobody wants a plague of rats in the house. Nevertheless, we strongly advise against rat poison. Rat poisons are highly potent substances that cause rats and other animals to die in agony. If a cat eats a poisoned rat, the poison in the rat is enough to kill the beloved pet too! Therefore, you should never buy rat poison or lay out rat bait.
Rats are omnivores. They like fruit, vegetables and pasta, but also insects and eggs. Cooked food scraps are particularly attractive to rats. If you want to avoid a family of rats moving into your garden, you should avoid open compost and never dispose of leftovers in the closed compost bin.
Store food in closed containers
If you already have rats in the garden, moving the compost to a closed container can help deprive the rats of a food source. Also make sure not to leave any food in the garden and also to collect fallen fruit quickly. In the apartment, too, you should only store food in closed containers made of glass or metal. Note: Plastic containers and Tupperware can be chewed through by rats.
Brown rats prefer to live in large underground tunnel systems or in sewers. Black rats, on the other hand, prefer to build their nests in warm and dry places on the upper floors. The fact that granaries are no longer used as storage rooms, but are being converted into apartments, is one of the reasons why black rats are slowly disappearing.
Rats are quite useful
But rats are by no means “useless” animals: in some countries they are used for landmine clearance. You can sniff the explosives in the mines, but are too light to set them off. The hit rate of the «mine rats» is almost 100 percent. So rats are amazing animals – try to get the rodents to change their clothes as gently as possible.
You can find more wildlife guides here.