Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poor guy, must of had so many complications
Warfarin is reversible with vitamin k. I suppose he was also getting a low dose per unit of body mass.
Was the guy secretly eating Special K cereal?
How Alberta Eradicated Rats
111–120 of 146 posts
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dose makes the poison. Warfarin is prescribed as a blood thinner for humans.
Is it only the dose? I think I read somewhere that rodents are especially vulnerable to this substance for some genetic reason. To lazy to check again. Not to lazy to pronounce my ignorance in a comment. Oh my.
Metabolic rate. The canary doesnt die fast because it is genetically sensitive. It dies fast because a birds metabolic rate is like a firecracker compared to ours.
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#113I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve lived in Ontario (in cities and the country) and have never seen a rat here. I know they exist but it’s not like we’re inundated by them. Maybe some specific businesses have problems with them, but it’s not something you see every day. I also lived in Montreal and did see them there sometimes. This was always early morning when I was out running - did not see them in Toronto, Ottawa, etc…
There are certainly rats in Hamilton and Toronto; and I had the misfortune of dealing with them in my home at one point. They ate through (or under) the crawl space, and they would eat through anything we tried to store food in.
Unlike the sibling though I couldn't claim a nice neighborhood, it was near a soy processing factory.
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#114I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
I care about the Lyme more than the rats tbh. That is way more likely to fuck you up long term than anything a rat will bring in this day and age. We aren’t getting the black plague anymore.
Around 7 people the US get the plague each year. Yes that’s low, but it’s low specially because measures actively keeping it low.
Which means understanding and maintaining these systems is still valuable as even if millions aren’t actively dying, that can change,
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#115I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
Albertan here too. Can confirm no rats My friend got Lyme disease from a tick though so I can't agree with that part
A tick bite in alberta? diagnosed lyme? when? seems very unlikely - there are no recorded cases in the 30+ years of tracking of a case of lyme disease from a bite _in alberta_. All from exposure elsewhere
(not to say that alberta will stay that lucky forever)
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Albertan here too. Can confirm no rats My friend got Lyme disease from a tick though so I can't agree with that part
A tick bite in alberta? diagnosed lyme? when? seems very unlikely - there are no recorded cases in the 30+ years of tracking of a case of lyme disease from a bite _in alberta_. All from exposure elsewhere (not to say that alberta will stay that lucky forever)
Possible she wasn't in Alberta when she got the tick bite, I'm not 100% certain. She may have been on a trip to Saskatchewan or something but she lives in Alberta and definitely was diagnosed with lyme disease from a tick bite.
Possible the bite happened elsewhere and just wasn't discovered until she got back home though. She does travel around a bit
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#117I wonder if we stopped trying to eradicate coyotes we might have an easier time with rats. I personally would rather see a coyote than a rat.
There are tons of coyotes in Alberta, to the point where my very urban university has had to put up "Be Coyote Smart" signs since they keep showing up on campus. Nobody that I'm aware of is trying to eradicate coyotes here either, aside from the occasional farmer during calving season.
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#118Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#119Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.
The irony that they figured out how to eliminate rats, but can’t diversify from oil and gas is pretty special.
It's unsurprising from a financial perspective, since both oil and gas (directly) and rat eradication (indirectly) make the province a ton of money.
Re: How Alberta Eradicated Rats
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poor guy, must of had so many complications
Warfarin is reversible with vitamin k. I suppose he was also getting a low dose per unit of body mass.
When we had mice in our house years ago, we tried for a few weeks setting poison bait in the garage to get rid of them. We could tell the mice were eating the bait, but there was still no end to the mice.
We then had a thought... what if the mice were also eating the dog food in the garage? The container lid for the dog food was not very strong (weak and flexible enough that a mouse could possibly squeeze in and out), and coincidentally, that dog food was also high in Vitamin K.
Once we got better sealed containers to store the dog food, it only took a few days before we started seeing delirious, sick mice running around aimlessly in plain day light. Shortly after that, we stopped seeing them entirely.
It's possible the dog food was not reversing the poison. Maybe with the dog food locked up they started eating more bait, or maybe it simply took longer than we expected for the poison kick in. But regardless, we definitely learned a valuable lesson about keeping the pet food well sealed!