How hard is it to kill a rat!!

ScumLord wrote: »

Why on earth would you lick a golf ball?

Foreplay

dodgyme wrote: »

I hate rats but by god the rentokill job sounds very interesting - great stories.

Yeah, it really was intereting work, but can remember being petrified or the first few weeks, as they bring to to some of their worst cases to ease you into the job.

I was never bitten thank god, but sometimes when the Rats are 'stoned out of it' on the bait (usually Bromadiolone or Alphachlorolose) it can be very funny, because it takes 48hours to kill them, for safety reasons, and during this period, they tend to wander out into the middle of a Restaurant in broad daylight, with hilarious results

Treated a few well known hotels for cockroaches in the 90's too YUCK !! and treating Wasps Nests could be a bit of a hairy experience:eek:

ok off topic but,

The one area of the job I really didn't like doing was Bird Control, because you always unintentionally killed a small amount of other birds in the process what were not part your original task.

In 1990 we got a big contract from the ESB in Poolbeg to kill off hundreds of Pigeons that were living around the complex. They were flying into warehouses and storage areas on site and crapping all over stock, forklift trucks, workers etc.

The process takes about a (working) week (5 days). You begin, by throwing / scattering ordinary grain on top of every flat roof in the complex at about 5am every morning, starting Monday. This consqeuently, after a few days, attracts every pigeon within a half mile radius of the area. They are waiting for you to arrive in the morning by the 4th day, and gorge themselves on the grain.

On day 5, you poison the grain with Alphachlorolose Technical Powder, in a small cement mixer, which drugs them into a comatic state within 10 minutes of eating it. So you lay the poisoned grain, and go have breakfast in the ESB canteen.

About 30 minutes later, on this occasion, we emerged from the canteed to see hundreds of drugged birds lying all over the whole complex.
It was literally like something out of a Hitchcock movie, or some Apocolyptic scene.

These drugged birds have to be collected manually, by walking, or driving all over the whole site, and put into thick black plastic bags (about 50 birds per bag). You then have to gas them, using, believe it or not, Zyklon B crystals (Hydrogen Cyanide), the same chemical used in the Concentration Camps. You mask up, with a full respirator, hold the bags open and dump a handful of crystals into each bag.
Theres a bit of flapping around at first, but all is quiet after a minute or so.

The corpses are then burnt the next day.

Not a nice part of the job, I never liked doing it. In fact, whenever I met a girl in the pub, I often avoided saying what I did for a living.

marcsignal wrote: »

The one area of the job I really didn't like doing was Bird Control, because you always unintentionally killed a small amount of other birds in the process what were not part your original task.

Thats nightmarish. I can't imagine the mentality of a person who could bring themselves to gas thousands of birds piled into bags for a living.

Zillah wrote: »

Thats nightmarish. I can't imagine the mentality of a person who could bring themselves to gas thousands of birds piled into bags for a living.

You usually don't end up doing Bird Control, until you are about a year on the job, for a few reasons. Mainly because, the Chemicals/Poisons you are using are far more dangerous, than those used for Rats or Mice, so you need more training. After working in the field for a year, dealing with Rats and Mice exclusively, it tends to dehumanise you to some degree.

If I'd been brought on a Bird Cull in my first few weeks working there, I'd definitely have left the job, no question about it. I think part of the psychology is that they start you off on the Nasty / Unpleasant creatures first, (Rats, Mice, Cockroaches, etc) and after dealing with them for a year or so, it all just becomes part of the job, I guess. I was initially working for Rentokil, as I said, but in my last year working in Pest Control, I was with a company called Terminix, and there were two Girls working with me doing exactly the same job.

Haven't worked in the field for about 12 years, I left in the mid 90's. One of the reasons I did so, was that I was becoming nervous about the cumlitave affect of handling dangerous chemicals, and I did notice a few things that gave me the jitters. Because you were handling 'anti blood clotting agents' for example, they seeped through your skin, it was practically impossible to avoid. Consequently, whenever you cut yourself shaving, after about a year on the job, it would bleed for hours on end.

Strangely, you might say, I can't abide cruelty to animals now. When I hear stories about kids doing cruel things to cats and dogs on Halloween, for example, it makes my blood boil.

Belfafter wrote: »

Many years ago I was getting my car left in to the garage for m.o.t and was at the place first thing in the morning.
The guy opened up and then shouted to the other workers who were just arriving.
There were 3 big brown rats scurrying around "the pit"- the sorta concrete trench they work underneath your car from.
Somebody had left their lunch the day before down there and the rats jumped down but couldnt get up the shher walls or the ladder.
Yer man tries to impress us all by dispatching them with quick downward movements with a bit of timber:)
First go and he misses and .00007 of a second later 3 big brown ones ran up that bit of timber,his arm,his shoulder then leaping 10 feet and out the garage door.
Had it been in the days of the video phone it would be a very famous incident by now if nothing else for the truly horrific look on yer mans face a split second after the last 1 ran up his arm.:p

bet he felt like some plank