Rat Facts

• The oils in cedar and pine are toxic to rats.
• Rats have poor vision. To compensate for this, a red or pink eyed rat will often weave its head side to side to add "motion" to see better. They also don't see in color.
• With lack of sight rats have a very keen sense of smell, taste, hearing, and touch.
• Adults are sexually mature in two to five months.
• Females produce three to six litters per year, each averaging seven to eight young.
• Adults live from six to twelve months.
• Rats transmit Murine typhus fever, rat bite fever, salmonellosis or bacterial food poisoning, Weils disease or leptospirosis and trichinosis, melioidosid, brucellosis, tuberculosis, pasteurellosis, rickettsial diseases, and viral diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease. Norway rats can also carry the rabies virus.
• The Norway rat and the roof rat are not native North American species. They traveled to the new world with the first explorers. The two species quickly invaded the continent because of their adaptability and fertility.
• Norway rats are found throughout the United States while roof rats primarily inhabit southeastern, Gulf Coast and southwestern states.
• Rats memorize their environment by body and muscle movement alone. They become so engrained by body movements that when objects are removed from their territory, rats will continue to move around them as if the objects where still there.
• Many times roof rats live in the upper stories of buildings, while Norway rats occupy the basement and first floor of the same building.
• Rats always travel the same runways and leave "smudge marks" - a buildup of dirt and oil from their fur - along walls, pipes, gnawed openings and beams and rafters.
• Rats constantly leave droppings. Fresh droppings are dark in color and soft in texture, but after three days they harden and lose the dark color.