Qualifications For Competent Rat-Catching

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22948, 17 May 1949, Page 4

Qualifications For Competent Rat-Catching

"Enthusiasm, keen observation, great patience and attention to detail are necessary for success in rat extermination; it is not merely a question of buying a trap, baiting and sotting it close against a rat hole, and leaving it there in the hope that some half-witted rat may stroll into it," commented Mr. T. W. Adams, senior inspector to the Department of Health in Gisborne, when outlining combative measures in the anti-rat campaign. ‘‘For a community programme poisoning is the best possible means of destruction," he continued. "In the present campaign a reliable poison, which has a high specific toxicity for rats and in the doses recommended is practically non-poisonous to man and domestic animals, is being used.” In poisoning Mr. Adams slated that the same process as for trapping should be observed. A plain bait without poison should 'be laid for several nights until it was being freely taken. Then the poison should be

added to kill as many rats as possible in the first attempt, after which prebating should begin again. When this bait without poison was being freely taken another mass attack should be made.

United Action Necessary

A combined and co-ordinated effort was essential, lie added. It was important. that poisoning should not be commenced until a signal was given by the campaign organisers as a simultaneous effort over the whole area would ensure the greatest possible kill. Mr. Adams said it was planned to begin pre-baiting on May 20 and to start poisoning throughout the area on June I.