Garbage disposals are some of the most useful appliances in many of our households, and in many families, they see daily use. However, some people worry that they can attract pests.
Garbage Disposals can attract rats, especially if they aren’t cleaned often enough. In order to prevent rats from being attracted to your home through your kitchen sink, you should clean your garbage disposal with bleach and boiling water every week.
That’s scary! Nobody wants rats in their house. But what about garbage disposals attract rats? And how is it that they actually get into the house?
Why Do Garbage Disposals Attract Rats?
When you use your garbage disposal to process unbeaten or bad food, most of that food ends up in a sewer somewhere. However, some of it gets stuck in the plumbing the disposal is attached to.
Rats can smell this accumulation of food using their acute sense of smell. Unfortunately for us humans, the mix of rotting food and other grossness is exactly the kind of thing that rats are looking for on a daily basis.
If the rats think that what they can smell might be a stable source of food, they’ll try and get to it. This endeavor will inevitably lead the rats into your home, where they will find enough food that they might forget about the garbage disposal entirely.
It doesn’t help that rats tend to live in the same sewers where garbage disposals deposit the waste they produce. That makes it even easier for rats to tell if your home is full of delicious delicious garbage.
How Do The Rats Get In?
You may not be happy to hear this, but rats can fit through pretty much any space that their tiny little rat heads can get into. This includes a lot of plumbing.
Luckily for us, rats actually don’t fit in sink pipes, so even if they know there’s food in your garbage disposal, they won’t be able to get to it. It’s not all good news though, since rats can still get into your house through the toilet.
Aside from being able to fit in tiny spaces, rats are also fantastic swimmers. This, combined with their sharp claws for climbing, means that rats are able to get from the sewers they make their homes into your toilet relatively easily. If they know there’s food in your garbage disposal, they’re way more likely to come in through your toilet.
How To Prevent Rats
The first and easiest thing you can do is always close the lid to your toilet when it isn’t in use. If the lid to your toilet is open, any rat that climbs into it can pretty easily jump out into your home and begin its quest to eat up all of your goodies.
The next most important thing is to keep the plumbing around your sink as clean as you can. You can do this by pouring some bleach and boiling water down it about once a month, more often if you use a garbage disposal.
Taking other steps to keep your kitchen clean can also be a big help when it comes to keeping your home rodent-free. Keep food off the ground, keep fruit in the fridge, prepare food over the sink when possible, and generally keep your kitchen as clean as you can.
Keeping your outdoor garbage cans closed tightly can also go a long way. Making sure that rats don’t have an easy way to stay on your property will go a long way toward keeping them out of your home. You can also limit their options for getting in by sealing up any cracks or holes in your walls
What If They Get In Anyways?
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, rats can get into your home. If this happens, there are still things that you can do to try and solve the problem,
If you learn that your home has rats in it, you should prioritize making sure that more rats don’t get in. That means doing the things listed in the previous section is a must.
You can also begin picking off the rats that are in your house using whatever traps you can get a hold of.
You should avoid using rat poison in your house though, as children or pets can mistakenly consume it and get sick. Rats can also spread it around the house before it gets them. If you do use poison, use it outside the house.
Of course, the go-to solution to a rat problem should be an exterminator. Exterminators are trained to thoroughly get rid of pests of all kinds in a way that is safe for them and for you.
What To Do If There Is A Rat In Your Toilet
Don’t panic! People who find rats in their homes often overreact using electrocution, flamethrowers, and even shotguns. All of these drastic, methods are more likely to damage you or your home than the agile and clever rat. Think Tom and Jerry, where you are Tom and the rat is Jerry.
If you find a rat in your toilet, it’s important to make sure that it doesn’t get out. You should close the toilet and put something heavy on top of it to prevent the rat from getting out. Then you should call an exterminator to deal with it.
If you’re brave enough to confront the rat on your own, you should either trap it in the toilet and leave it there or try and hold it underwater. Rats are really good at holding their breath, but they will eventually drown if you hold them down.
You can also pour bleach into the toilet bowl, which should kill the rat in about fifteen minutes. This is both safer and more effective than trying to use a weapon to deal with the poor little thing, although it doesn’t seem especially humane to me.
Professionals use a snare to remove rats from toilets. A snare is a looped chord that catches the rat by the neck without harming it. Do not make a makeshift snare to deal with the rat! If you tie a trap to a string and lower it into the bowl, it’s likely to catch a part of the rat like a hand or a nose, leaving the rat free and also angry.
In short, if you want the rat dealt with peacefully, call pest control.
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