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Concerns over therapy ferrets used to kill rats at UK’s largest children’s prison
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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Prevention definitely makes sense. So do snap traps, I just didn’t know if the old school method was considered as painless as possible. I don’t like poisons because of trophic concentration. Not currently dealing with rats but I do want chickens again someday so I’m sure I’ll face this question eventually.
Poisons kill in a pretty ugly way and make their way up the food chain as you said. Snap traps don't work all the time, but using good ones minimizes the chances of suffering, but it's still going to happen, that's just somewhat unavoidable.
I help with wildlife rescue and see the effects of poison on raptors, so I appreciate people not going to poison as a first option.
The problem with snap traps is that rats are clever little bastards. If there's more than one rat, the survivors quickly learn to avoid the traps if one of their peers gets its neck snapped.
I own a big old house in a place where there are rats in the woods nearby. Closing off every potential rat entry point was a time-consuming pain in the ass, but it was pretty effective once it was finished.
I'm thankful the only rat I ever found was someone's escaped pet. I enjoy the mice/rats as much as I do most other animals, whereas they just need to stay outside or in the clinic and we get along just fine. I'd rather block holes than hurt them, they're just doing what they need to do for themselves after all.