I'll just entertain myself

Repeatedly rats get behind my dishwasher. I can't be dragging the dishwasher out all the time so I tried various remedies until Youtube gave me a recipe. It was British, so it recommended a biscuit, which to me looked like something an American would call a cookie. So I substituted one vanilla wafer and two Ritz crackers. Ground them up, added a medium size spoon of sugar, squirted about an inch and a half to two inches blob of Colgate toothpaste. Mixed it together thoroughly. Then spread it over tomato pieces. So far I've used it for two separate infestations and it has rid me of the rats.

How does it work?

One time that I was in NYC, we saw a rat outside our Brooklyn brownstone. I had happened to buy a Twinkie as I'd never had one. I took one bite and spit it out where the rat was, then threw the rest of it to him. When we returned that evening, the Twinkie was still there. It stayed there our entire 10 day stay. Even a rat wouldn't eat a Twinkie.

Funny fact: Alberta doesn't have any rats. We have cute little mice but no rats.

Something in the toothpaste does them in.
Rats are intelligent and they are survivors. If you toss them some food (or poison) they will avoid it, no matter how good it tastes. A rat that got in one time in the past managed to get inside the pantry and it pigged out on some dog food. But when I put the same dog food out as part of a trap it was not fooled. I had to find another way to kill it.

That's cool to know. I'm going to look at my toothpaste ingredients now!

It has to be a fluoride toothpaste.

So it's the fluoride? Because you can buy bottles of that. My mom used to put 6 drops in our orange juice every morning.

I don't know how that tastes, but it has to entertain the rat's palette to get it to eat.

It's tasteless. But if the toothpaste is working for ya, great.

I think it's the artificial sweetener in toothpaste. It's toxic for dogs and other animas but it tastes good so the rats are likely to woof it down. I think it causes internal bleeding (but I didn't look it up to make sure) but whatever, it poisons them.

Could be. I blindly follow this kind of youtube until I find something that works. They eat this stuff right away, whereas a trap can sit there untouched.

I had no idea it was toxic to animals or that it was in toothpaste.

I actually like these little pests, but just won't live with them. Once when I got careless and left out the dog dish with food in it an undetected rat got in the habit of stealing it. When I realized, I began hiding the dish when not in use and I moved it to a different location when it was Rocky's dinnertime. This particular rat must have thought it was as deserving as the dog because it came right out in the open to follow the food dish. I managed to kill it off about two days later.

We never had rats like this until they began cutting and clearing the last forest remnants by my neighborhood. Now they have started clearing the rest of the trees across the main road.

We ruin their habitat then go nuts when they decide to visit. Don't get me wrong, you have to trap them or they will set up residence at your home............and that could get ugly.

Apparently they can reproduce every 22 days.

Well, I guess they like to stay busy.

I've managed to keep the bugs away. This stuff I'm using now should limit the rats to a short visit. This old mobile home is just too inviting, but I'm unable to seal every point of entry.

You could also put it outside or at their place of entry, if you know where that is. Oh yeah, I forgot, Rocky.

That dog gets into places that surprise me. I have to be extremely careful. He once ate my rat baits with baking soda in them. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to do harm.

I just saw a youtube of a man putting shoe polish on the tomato and then crushed salted peanuts and cookies on top of the shoe polish, complete with pictures of a dead mouse.

There was a dog in the news over here who had to be operated on after eating five bags of chocolate money. There was a picture of all the foil removed which to be honest looked a bit suspect for paper money, lots of reds, purples and greens, choc money is gold or silver.

I know chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but there was no mention of that.