Sewer rats: which rodents are not afraid of running water

Is this possible?

A rat jumping out of a toilet is not a horror story or a fairy tale, but a fairly common occurrence in everyday life. Rats are known to have excellent intelligence, so they are able to guess that a sewer pipe will help them get to a person and settle into his home.

In this way, a wild rat gets into the house most often from residents of the first and second floors , but there are cases when these smart rodents climbed even higher, to the fifth floor. But you ask: “How can rats move through the sewer and not suffocate in the water?” The answer is simple: rats, like all small rodents, can stay at depth for a long time, hold their breath and swim calmly. In apartment buildings, the sewer system is a network of pipes that connect the apartments. A rat can get into them through the basement, swim a little underwater, and then calmly climb up the vertical pipes.

Rats feel safe in the sewer, but in search of food and warmth they can leave it in any way.

How to properly clean a room where rats or mice live

Rats, like mice, carry an incredible number of diseases and infections that are dangerous to humans and domestic animals. Therefore, after removing these pests, it is necessary to disinfect the premises.

To reliably clean enclosed spaces (rooms, garages, sheds) from traces of rats, follow these recommendations:

Open all doors and windows. Ventilate the room for at least 30 minutes;
When cleaning, use a respirator and rubber gloves;
For disinfection, mix 1 glass of bleach with 10 glasses of water or use specialized products;
Never use a broom or vacuum cleaner: dangerous bacteria found in rat feces and dried urine easily rise into the air and enter the lungs. Carry out only wet cleaning;
Use steam cleaning to disinfect carpets and upholstered furniture;
Place dead rodents in double plastic bags and place them in the trash;
Contaminated clothing and bedding should be washed separately from other items. After washing, dry at high temperatures or iron the items with an iron heated to maximum temperature;
When you are finished cleaning, discard your gloves and wash your hands with hot water and soap.

Reasons for the appearance of rodents in sewers and toilets

Rats decide to live in the same house with you not because it is more convenient and comfortable for them, but because they are forced to look for new places with affordable food and a place to raise offspring . However, these are not the only reasons why rodents decide to move closer to humans. The most common ones are presented below:

The more actively a rat breeds in the basement, the higher the likelihood that it will soon begin to look for a new place to live, since the old one is filled with its relatives;
Although rats can tolerate various temperature changes, at the first frost they still try to move to where it will be warmer. In late autumn and winter, rodents increasingly begin to climb into apartments and houses;
If pest control has recently been carried out in the basement or at a nearby landfill, then be prepared for the fact that entire populations of rats will soon appear in your house, running away from deadly poison.

If the house is old, then it will not be difficult for a rat to gnaw holes in the pipes right in the basement and climb into the apartments. Walls won't stop her either, as a rat's teeth can make a hole in anything. We wrote a separate article about this.

If the house is new, recently rebuilt and made of good and expensive materials, then it will be more difficult for rats to infest it. However, now modern plumbing increasingly consists of ordinary plastic pipes instead of cast iron pipes, which are unlikely to withstand the teeth of rats.

Plastic sewer pipes in the basement are quite vulnerable to rats' teeth

The danger of urban rats

Rats are carriers of more than a hundred different types of diseases, which can even be present in one carrier at the same time. Rat bites can be fatal to humans, and a rat, if it senses any threat to its life, will certainly bite the source of this threat.

The worst thing is that rats have an increased level of socialization, thanks to which they can perfectly communicate with each other and transmit any information. Therefore, if one individual was able to find a way into the apartment through the sewer, after some time the entire population will know about it and use the new path.

No matter how fantastic and crazy the idea that a rat can get into your home through sewer pipes may seem, it is still true. So try to protect yourself. Install special screens where the toilet is attached to the pipes, do not flush food or leave it in the toilet, such as a bowl of pet food.

However, if a rodent does appear, it must be caught and thrown away immediately. The first rat to appear in your toilet is just a scout . The rest will begin to come after her, if she can return and pass everything on to her relatives. In addition, if you didn’t notice the first discoverers, the next ones will be able to calmly get out of the toilet and wipe the wet skins on towels, rugs and carpets, leaving a lot of harmful bacteria on the fabric.

Can a rat get out of a toilet?

A gray pasyuk rat suddenly appeared from the toilet in the apartment of a resident of the city of Shakhty, Rostov region of Russia.

The wild rodent, according to experts, did not get into the house through a hole in the floor, but swam through the sewer in the bathroom. Fortunately, the woman saw the rat emerge from the toilet in time and managed to instantly slam the lid. And then, despite the fright, she pressed down the lid with a bucket of water standing nearby...

Then the stunned city dweller rushed to call... the city water utility...

“The water utility told me that they couldn’t help me - they don’t catch rats,” the miner said about the unsuccessful call.

While the citizen got through to her destination, the rat... disappeared. But then she appeared again. However, the “infiltrator” was already awaited and neutralized.

All summer they reported from Chisinau that rats were climbing into them through toilets...

As you know, rats are excellent swimmers and can stay under water for up to three minutes. They are distinguished by enviable flexibility, and their body is designed so that they can squeeze into any gap into which their small head fits.

Therefore... it is not difficult for them to travel several tens of meters through pipes with water. Thanks to the structure of their paws, rodents easily climb vertical surfaces, even to the upper floors of high-rise buildings.

In addition, gray and black rats are distinguished by their special intelligence and intelligence.

In the experiment, National Geograpic reports, a rat actually swam through a sewer pipe and made it to the toilet.

September 24, 2017

Source:

Shock, video: a rat can run out of the toilet

April 21 | Barnaul | 3°C … 4°C | USD – 61.3222 | EUR – 75.6532

11:30, August 19, 2015, Incidents2122

The National Geographic Channel conducted an experiment: can a rat really crawl out of a toilet or is it just a myth?

The result of the experiment hardly pleased musophobes: yes, a rat can easily climb into the toilet through the sewer pipes and get out into the world. In the video presented, the rodent easily bypasses all obstacles, finds a loophole in the toilet structure where it can get air, and goes outside.

This is possible thanks to the incredible vitality and flexibility of rats: they can swim for a long time and hold their breath for three minutes. Besides, a rat will go anywhere its head goes - and its head goes anywhere.

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Video: how rats can get into an apartment through the toilet - National Geographic Russia

Rats are smart animals, and their bodies are able to adapt to a wide variety of conditions, even life-threatening ones. They recognize poisons and adapt to them, they know how to swim and hold their breath under water, and the structure of their body allows them to seep into the tiniest holes: the main thing is that their head can fit through there.

Thanks to this, nothing prevents rats from entering a person’s home in various ways, including through the sewer. Its pipes have a larger diameter than conventional pipes for supplying hot or cold water.

In addition, there is a small protective grille located at the sink drain, while the “journey” through the sewer pipes ends with a comfortable, wide exit to the outside.

Even a toilet lid will not always stop a rat, especially if it does not fit tightly to the seat.

As a result, pest control services in the United States and other countries often receive requests from people who have discovered a rat in the toilet of their apartment. If it is not possible to contact a specialist, just close the toilet lid tightly and press the flush several times. A tenacious rodent can survive on the surface of the water for up to three days, but under water - no more than three minutes.

Read also about mutated invincible rats; Find out how rodents help each other.

Source:

National Geographic Experiment: Can a Rat Swim Through a Sewer and into a Toilet?

National Geograpic checked out an urban legend about rats that can swim through sewer pipes and end up in someone's toilet. The experimental rodent actually swam through the pipe, found a place to rest inside the toilet, and then got to the bowl itself.

National Geographic explains that rats are excellent swimmers and can stay underwater for up to three minutes. In addition, their body is designed in such a way that they can get into any gap through which their head fits.

Rats crawling through sewers is not a fiction. In 2011, Gothamist reported on a Brooklyn woman who discovered a rodent in her toilet. Pest controller Eddie Marco then said that he often encounters such cases. According to him, rats run through an empty pipe, end up in the toilet and cannot swim back.

“And people call me, I come, I just flush the toilet and I get 100 bucks!” — Marco explained the method of fighting rats. According to him, this often happens in basement and first floor toilets.

Now Marco charges from $150 to $200 to flush or otherwise drown a rat that has floated into the toilet. He encounters about a dozen such cases a year.

Source:

Fighting sewer rats

Not long ago, a problem arose - a rat(s) regularly chews through the plastic corrugation connecting the toilet to the sewer pipe.

How she ended up there, only she knows, she doesn’t come out, she gnaws the corrugation so that only human waste (let’s say) flows not where it’s supposed to, but onto the floor. It’s good that we have a drain in the floor, but it still doesn’t matter, we need to take action.

A search on the Internet yielded nothing but diverse knowledge about these rodents, including people writing that even in high-rise buildings on the upper floors they are also lifeless, they jump out of the toilet or eat corrugations..

I had to make the device myself, inspired by childhood memories of catching muskrats. So here it is - salvation from rats threatening to jump out of the toilet at the most inopportune moment, I think the information will be useful to many.

We take a new corrugation, and drill holes along the edges a little more than ϕ2 mm, at a distance of 1 cm from each other. I ended up with 26 holes.

We prepare 26 – according to the number of holes – pieces of galvanized steel wire ϕ2 mm, length – 90 mm, sharpening the ends on one side.

Retreating ~20 mm. from the blunt end, bend the wire approximately 90°

We insert the prepared wires into the holes of the corrugation and bend them, like this

How to prevent rats in the toilet

And yet, what can be done to prevent rats from getting into the house through the toilet?

First of all, as soon as you see a rodent in the toilet, take a photo of it so that you have proof in front of the building management company;
Then cover the toilet and place something heavy on top (a basin with laundry, a flower pot, a bucket of water or any other heavy object);
You can try to wash the rodent off, but this is unlikely to help, since in the fast flow of water it will be able to grab the pipes with its paws and climb up again;
After this, you need to contact the management company, since it is the company that deals with deratization and disinfestation of basements, therefore it is obliged to comply with all safety measures for the residents of the house. If you wish, you can call the SES to find out what means can be used to poison a rat. Read about rat poisons here;
In case the rodent managed to get out, it is better to place traps around the toilet. The rat will get caught in them, after which it can be easily killed or thrown out;
You can also kill a rat swimming in the toilet by pouring bleach or bleach into it. The rat will die from the pungent odor, and it can be safely washed off. You can also scald it with boiling water, but this method is quite cruel, since the animal is unlikely to die immediately, and will suffer for a long time from how the skin peels off from the burns. It's better to poison it right away. Read about humane methods of killing rats in this article.

As you can see, rats are capable of many things when their population and survival are at stake. And for the most curious, you can watch a video about how a rat gets out of the toilet and how it gets there.