How To Keep Rats From Eating My Cables? 1032
An anonymous reader writes "I am curious to know what vermin prevention/eradication methods are used in other locations. I am working at a dealership and we have an exterminator man who puts out glue traps and bait stations, but they still come and eat my cable. The latest was a couple of fiber runs — very expensive. I have threatened my boss with a cat for the server room (my office), going so far as to cruise the local Humane Society's website and eye-balling a nice Ragdoll-Siamese mix. Even if I do feel like dealing with a litter box, cat hair in the equipment and pouncings on my keyboards (and I'm not sure I do), that only covers the server room. We have multiple buildings on the campus which get locked up to prevent theft, but it isn't secure enough to keep out the critters and the latest chew spot was in the ceiling. Any ideas?"
Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Rats and mice don't eat cables...They chew the insulation off to make their nests...or if it happens to be in their way. So your best be it to figure out what the hell they're eating, and shut down their food supply. They'll move on shortly thereafter.
The word "campus" may put paid to that notion, however. Campus implies lots of people, lots of garbage, and lots of space. God help you if it's a college campus, the promised land of vermin the world over, where bulldog sized rats subsist on half a cheeseburger out of the dumpster. If that's the case, then there is no way you'll be able to shut off their food.
Introducing predators isn't necessarily a bad idea, but its a measure that can, in no way, co-exist with traditional methods of poison and trapping. Your predator will likely set off the traps and poison itself on the bioaccumulated toxins in the bodies of its prey. If you do get a cat, better feed it a bunch of activated charcoal with its kibble.
Which brings us to poison and trapping. It's not that they don't work. They work GREAT. If they're not working, it means you're not using enough. You need to come to the budgetary equilibrium where the amount you spend on extermination makes sense based on the cost of cable replacement.
So if you can't shut off their food, and you can't stomach the thought of your kitties/ferrets/snakes keeling over dead from poison every month or two, you're going to have to up the extermination.
Deer repellent/hot pepper spray (capsaicin) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Conduits (Score:3, Informative)
For a big install that may not be possible...If all the wire is already pulled, for example, you can't unpull it all and add conduit without a huge expense.
On the other hand, it may be pulled in quantities that exceed common conduit widths. I've seen even small buildings with bundles of cable the diameter of a soccer ball, and if the conduit is that big, it's more likely a convenient rat super-highway than a deterrent.
Re:Cats ? (Score:5, Informative)
Cats have been used widely to get rid of rats and mice since the beginning of time. perhaps you should get some of those ?
Not all cats are good mousers, however. It really helps to have one who was properly taught by their mama-cat how to do it.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
They could also try to secure the installations with expanding urethane foam sealant. This is the stuff the Mythbusters used to "prank a car", and that Mike Rowe used a few weeks ago to seal a mine shaft.
http://www.homeenvy.com/db/9/49.html [homeenvy.com]
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Good call. I spaced on that part. That's almost worse though, because of what may be nearby. A river, some fast food places, one of those goddamn toxic peanut factories.
All the same points apply though. Stop the food. Or get some exterminators...Some good ones if the rats are coming from a neighboring property. Maybe see if you can report your neighbors for excessive vermin?
Re:Cats ? (Score:3, Informative)
Say what? I'll agree that some cats are better hunters than others, but I've yet to meet a non-grossly overweight cat that doesn't show immediate interest in anything smaller than it scurrying about. Seriously, stick any cat in a building where all kinds of interesting sounds and smells are going on, and they are good to go.
Re:Conduits (Score:4, Informative)
There's always a way to get a protective sheath overtop of a cable run.
You can slit a large rubber tube or PVC pipe section and slip it over the cabling in the exposed sections.
You can also take ducting metal and screw it over the exposed cables to connect it up to whatever wall or corner it's running along. It -will- cost money to do, but that cost is almost certainly less than the cost of replacing fiber, and so should be an easy sell.
THe Old Ways Are Often The Best. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Simple Option (Score:3, Informative)
Two additional options (not exclusive) (Score:4, Informative)
one is a coating for the cabling to "discourage" chewing [hytechdistributors.com].
popular choices are anything capsaicin based or something with a bitter substance (bitter to rodents that is)
another is those ultra-sonic repellers (it's worth a try....some rats may not give a "rat's" ass about it and still continue to do their deeds)
In the end, it may not be just one thing but a combination of things.
poisons to kill off the rats, deterrents to prevent them from chewing on cabling, and making it very unpleasant for them to live on the lot.
Especially, yanking out the welcome mat from under them.
Those rats who don't learn not to leave and not to chew on the cables will get poisoned.
Two thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
My basement door doesn't exactly seal right (my goal this year is to replace it) and we used to have mice coming into the basement all the time.
The fix was to get one of those high-frequency boxes you plug in and clicks every now and then. Ever since I put one near that door, we haven't had a mouse problem.
Second thought. If you do decide to use snap traps or glue traps, be sure to use peanut butter instead of cheese. Cheese dries out too quickly and they never eat it. PB stays good for a long time.
Third thought (yea I said two, here's a bonus). The very popular anticoagulant called Warfarin (AKA Coumadin) was originally used as rat poison.
Re:The Simple Option (Score:3, Informative)
Worst case of that I'd personally seen was a mouse that'd had its face stuck to the glue trap. In its struggles to free itself, it'd pulled its eyeball out of the socket.
After that, I decided that snap-traps were less cruel...
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Having had rats as pets, I can attest that rats can chew through concrete. Poison sucks because when they die you've got rotting corpses all over the place. The most important thing to do is get rid of food sources. Once that is done, there are several options. Some police stations are using stray cats to help with the rodent problem. They are using feral cats though so they don't desire human interaction. Throw a feral cat in a building and you may never see it again, just clean up the box and keep food & water out. They also are good at getting up into drop ceilings. Be careful though I've got a cat who is a wire chewer so you may just be adding another cable destroyer to the mix.
Some people recommend plaster of paris (dry) mixtures because when they eat it, it clogs them up and I guess they don't stink as much when they die. I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure. Mix this with traps in areas that are easy to clean and you've got a start. My personal preference for keeping rats out of my barn/hay is the rat snake. They don't chew on cables and unlike a cat, they hunt out rats nests. A good rat snake(s) will eat most if not all of the litters and that can do more to get rid of your population than anything else.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Use STEEL WOOL the rats hate it. That really helped us.
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
Rats will chew through urethane foam like it's made out of ... err ... urethane foam. It's a good step, but it's insufficient against any chewing rodent who thinks there's supposed to be a path there.
As the AC nearby says, steel wool shoved into the gap that you're foaming shut will solve that problem though.
Cats kill rats just fine (Score:5, Informative)
These are just regular sized cats with no ninja training.
Rats will happily rip a hole through drywall so don't really care if you block up holes. I blocked up some holes with chew-proof material and the bastards just ripped another hole.
If you have rats inside, then the chances are that they are an overflow population from somewhere else. We didn't have rats in the house until the population built up in the barn and the "turf wars" pushed some of the rats into the house. As soon as we killed a lot of the rats in the barn they disappeared from the house.
Not the humane society (Score:5, Informative)
You were probably kidding, but I'd like to point out that our local humane society has rules against adopting out animals for the purpose of pest management or hunting.
Rats learn - bug Cats do too. (Score:3, Informative)
Rat poison isn't that efficient.
Rats are able to learn. They'll end up learning that said poison is poisonous to them. (That's why lot of modern poison have very delayed effect. So that it's harder for the rat to make the connection and learn what's killing them).
Bio-accumulation : predators higher up in the food chain are going to diet on poison-rich rats, and thus are going to poison themselves through their food.
By using rat poison, not only are you (attempting to) kill rats. But there's a high risk that you'll be killing the neighbors' cats, snakes, ferrets, etc.
On the other hands, predators have been considered efficient and used successfully for the past millenia.
So getting several cats *could* be a solution.
A couple of caveat :
- Cut the rat poison first, otherwise kitty is going to get poisoned. (or at least get advices from a vet on how to protect kitty).
- Get a grown up cat. One that has already learned to use the litter box, has already learned to hunt, etc.
- When getting a cat, get one who has grown up outdoor and is used to hunting. Avoid the overweighted, indoor, constantly drooling and sleeping type.
- Prefer shorter hair : they are simpler to take care of, tend less to puke hair balls, and tend to leave less hair around.
None the less, try to secure and isolate the server cabinet with proper dust filters. Other wise you might have to often vacuum your server's radiators. (Anyway, the filters will be good against dust bunnies too).
- Depending on the size of the territory to cover. Adding a couple more cats might help, if you can manage to handle them all.
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
Rats actually cannot vomit [ratbehavior.org], but otherwise you are pretty much correct.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
The first part is probably true, the second part isn't, AFAIK: rats can't throw up. It is physically impossible for them. This is also why they have such a very good memory for what they can and can't eat, and only try a small amount the first time. If they get sick they just have to wait it out basically, and hope they survive. This is why surviving rats learn very well to be careful, and remember insanely well what made them sick.
This is probably why you have to use bio-accumulative poisons to kill rats, I suppose. (And even then they might still learn because they recognize the smell on other dead rats!)
Re:Three options (Score:4, Informative)
Mice also tend to move along walls. If you think your workplace has a problem with mice, moving the cables well away from the walls will go a long way toward protecting them, and glue and/or spring traps set along the walls will often get rid of them.
Re:The Simple Option (Score:3, Informative)
Heh. I wouldn't have pegged you for a big poison proponent. I agree though; if you can't shut off their food, there really isn't any other option.
As far as humane-ness, if you're killing them, does it really matter how?
Why not peg me for a poison proponent? Science and rationality are based on what is accurate, and effective. I am a rationalist. :)
There are more humane ways of killing things than others. The least suffering and pain caused to the organism the better. Jewish Kosher protocols require one to slit the carotid artery of the animal with a blade with no defects. Cutting oneself with a super sharp blade, a number of humans can attest that it is fairly painless. The animal then bleeds out very quickly bringing unconsciousness within seconds.
Not only is it the Jewish Kosher protocol, but it also is similar to the protocol for the Japanese ritual suicide used by women, "Jigai".
Now, throwing them into a fire or boiling pot is pretty mean and wrong, unless the animal is proven to "not experience pain".
Re:Deer repellent/hot pepper spray (capsaicin) (Score:2, Informative)
Live traps (Score:3, Informative)
And glue traps are incredibly cruel; other killing traps almost as much so. Live-trap them and drive them (a few miles or more) to someplace green without buildings around, make them work for a living.
I tried using a live trap for rats. Out of a dozen or so, I only managed to snag 2. I reluctantly ended up having to use the crush-their-skulls version for the rest. It's bad enough when the trap kills them. It's really gruesome when it only partly kills them and I have to finish the job.
Re:Three options (Score:1, Informative)
Rub cables with Capsaicin or hot sauce.
Capsaicin can be bought without prescription for arthritis pain.
Re:The Simple Option (Score:4, Informative)
My girlfriend's landlord put in glue traps.
We started hearing this weird high-pitched noise, like a flyback transformer in a CRT going wonky.
It was mice screaming because they'd been stuck to the glue trap for days and were starving to death.
If you want to get them loose without killing them don't pull them. A: you pull parts off and B: they're still covered in glue so they just stick to debris and fluff and leaves and whatever else. Vegetable oil will get them loose. Just, y'know, don't use a lot or you end up with drowned oily mice.
Re:Three options (Score:2, Informative)
Back then, yes.
Now, (under 99.9999% of all merchant agreements) merchants are not allowed to verify signatures or ask for ID.
The threshold for requiring a signature keeps going up as well.
The reasoning behind it is not one of convenience, it is to allow more fraud to occur. Smaller cases of fraud are more likely to go unnoticed and uncontested.
The push for RFID chips is not about security, it's about shifting the burden on the user, instead of the banks. Fraud? User must have lost their card and failed to report it in time. They get nothing. When in reality, people will just be cloning your "secure" chip and pin cards, or buying things online, over the phone, or through the mail where you don't even need the 3-digit code in the back most of the time.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Now, (under 99.9999% of all merchant agreements) merchants are not allowed to verify signatures
Says who? Our merchant agreement says that we are supposed to verify signatures.
or ask for ID.
Your right about that part. Mastercard will actually fine you if you ask for ID or post minimum purchase amounts. Visa isn't as aggressive (in my experience) but can do the same thing if they get a bug up their butt.
The push for RFID chips is not about security, it's about shifting the burden on the user, instead of the banks.
The burden has never been on the banks. If my card is lost and used to buy $2,000 worth of crap at Best Buy then Best Buy is going to be out the money when they lose the chargeback. You think the bank is going to allow themselves to take the hit? Can I have some of what you are smoking?
And what push for RFID chips? Other than a handful of novelty credit cards I've never come across them.
A lot of the suggestions here won't work. (Score:5, Informative)
I have/had a similar set of problems.
1. I've owned pet rats and know what they can eat.
2. I currently own house rabbits.
3. I have a recurring mouse problem.
So lemme sum up. A rabbit can eat through a 14 gauge stranded copper cord of the sort you'd use for your refrigerator. Guess how I figured that out? Since it's starting at one side it doesn't ever cross both the live and neutral, so it doesn't get electrocuted. It can eat every cord off the back of a computer in under three minutes. Guess how I figured that out? A rat doesn't have quite the toothy abilities of a rabbit but it's fairly close. They can certainly cut through thin copper.
Neither the rabbits nor the rats -- nor my dog -- have been bothered by sprays intended to keep animals from digging/chewing on things. The super hot pepper-derived stuff stopped the rabbits but not the rats, and my dog loves the stuff. The sour/bitter stuff didn't slow any of them down even slightly.
Plastic split conduit doesn't even slow them down. Even when soaked in bitter or hot do-not-chew stuff.
Rats can chew through the side of a lead pipe and crawl through a hole the size of a US quarter. I don't have evidence that they can chew through copper pipe but I wouldn't be surprised.
Reducing food doesn't work. Once they're established, you can't keep the place clean enough. I have no idea how wild mice manage to find nutrition but they do. We keep all our food in sealed containers and vacuum and roomba every other day, and neither the dog nor the sometimes cat deter the mice in the slightest. The mice do, however, drive the dog and the cat completely insane, so if you want to have your predator madly clawing at the wall where it can either hear or smell a mouse, go for it. Both dogs and clawed cats can dig through standard drywall, and then you have a repair to do. (and they remember it and keep trying. Pitbulls are very, very retentive dogs and she'll dig through 12mm thick plywood to get to where she remembers a mouse or rat or squirrel to have hidden, once, six months ago.)
hate to say it but d-con and other awful poisons are probably the best way to go, as far as eradication, and flexible conduit to protect the lines you can't easily replace.
As I said elsewhere, glue traps are probably more evil than poison, and oftentimes live traps are as well, because you don't check them often enough and the animal dies of dehydration. And if you're really lucky the animal will manage to drag the glue trap into a place you can't get to and if you're young and still have good ears you can hear its little high-pitched screams for a couple days before it does die.
Re:Three options (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Two additional options (not exclusive) (Score:4, Informative)
Want a cheap way to dissuade the rats from chewing on your wires? Buy the hottest hot sauce you can find, or better yet just buy some pure capsaicin [sweatnspice.com] powder [hotternell.com]. Dissolve it in a liquid and put it in a lawn sprayer, then wander around spraying all the wires.
I have a feeling that the rats will leave your wires alone after that.
As capsaicin is soluble in warm water and alcohol, but not cold water, you may need to dissolve the powder in an alcohol/water mix.
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
If he waited a few years he could have defaulted on it and gotten a Governmental bailout ;)
That would be funny, if it weren't so sad...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI [youtube.com]
Re:Three options (Score:2, Informative)
forget about out smarting them, rats are not only better adapted, they are also extremely smart and seem to have a sixth sense about danger. put a rat trap down and once one has had it's neck snapped the others spidey sense will tinge when they see one.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Steel wool works great but isn't advised for long term use. It is flammable and if it gets wet it rusts and makes a nasty mess.
Copper wool costs more but is just as effective with the benefit that spark won't ignite it and when it gets wet it basically stays the same.
Re:Three options (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
but the dealer wouldn't let me put more than $5K on the home equity Visa.
At some point, the percentage the CC companies charge exceeds the cost of processing check or cash by a good deal. Large dollar checks they'll spend the effort and call the bank/electronically verify it. Cash well, they'll count that and check for counterfeiting. For lots of medium dollar purchases (10X1000), credit cards are actually the cheapest for most businesses over the costs of handling cash or worrying about rubber checks.
14 mice later... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
Rats will chew through steel wool. They won't chew through copper mesh, though, and it's sold for precisely that purpose (sometimes sold as "hardware cloth").
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
Starving or not starving the cats has no effect on their catches. The key is that they were taught to be mousers by their mother. Even fixed / not fixed doesn't have any effect (and ultimately, the cats would be healthier if they were fixed).
Re:The Simple Option (Score:3, Informative)
You'd think so, but I've successfully re-used snap traps. Mice will brave death for peanut butter.
Re:Cats kill rats just fine (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because a lucky kill on a pet creature that hasn't learned itself how to survive as prey is the same thing as actually being a skillful and cunning hunter capable of not just surviving on what you bring in, but being able to catch live prey to bring to your litter to train them on how to do it.
Yes, all cats have instincts. That doesn't mean they are ready killers from the git go. When I was a teenager, my family moved from suburbia to a farm. Our house pets were transitioned from house pet to yard pet.
Yes, the cat stalked the rodents. Yes the dog would chase and even sometimes tree coon's and dillos. But neither of them had a freaking clue what to do then, and most of the time even failed at that. When they did manage to catch some sick or terminally stupid creature, half the time they'd play with it not having gained the 'kill reflex' when they were young. Half the time they'd bite at it ineffectively in random spots. Neither of them ever got the "grab the neck" instinct or in the case of the dog, the "shake vigorously" instinct.
Contrast that to the cats and dogs that came after, the ones that actually came from litters that were raised and born outside and I guarantee you that you'll immediately notice what I'm talking about.
Since their children have moved out a long time ago, my folks have salved their 'empty nest' syndrome by keeping a colony of cats and a couple of dogs. Although most are born 'wild', a good number of them are still 'take ins' from people my parents know in the community who need a good home for their cats and you can ALWAYS tell the difference between the ones who grew up knowing how to kill and the ones that didn't.
Re:Three options (Score:3, Informative)
You aren't supposed to verify ID.
The signature on the back of a card has nothing to do with ID. It is there as acceptance of the card agreement.
The USPS won't accept credit cards where you've written "SEE ID" on the signature line because it isn't about ID at all.
Re:The Simple Option (Score:3, Informative)
I have personally seen someone pull a mouse off a glue trap and leave the feet behind.
Mice are pretty flimsy, when it comes down to it. Rats less so.
Re:Conduit (Score:3, Informative)
They make armored innerduct for fiber runs. It's also known as "Pest Duct".
http://www.innerduct.com/products/hdpe_innerduct.php#pest_duct [innerduct.com]
Check out the latest Norscan Report (Score:2, Informative)
The latest Norscan Report has an article with some useful information.
"Problematic Pests: Protecting Your Cables":
http://www.norscan.com/PDF/0901news.pdf [norscan.com]
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Three options (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, wet copper will "rust" (oxidize), the color of CuO2 is bluish green, and I bet you've seen it on copper stuff before.
CuO2 is poisonous when eaten, so it will work even better as a rat deterrant...
So, by all means, go with Copper wool. And use armored fiber cables, the rats won't go through the armor so they won't damage the fiber core, and you can apply new insulation to whatever armor they exposed (in order to counter humidity).