I think birth control is a wonderful idea, I've no problem with that at all. What was your aggressive person's reasoning that it was wrong?
Truly I'm not being in any way aggressive about your mention of the plaster method, I just want to point out that it is actively cruel because it causes so much pain. I agree that some poisons may also be painful, and we should be aware of that before choosing to use them, but I don't think that the use of Warfarin-type bait which causes bleeding is painful. I once very nearly bled to death myself and it wasn't painful at all, just like falling asleep - it was also caused by Warfarin!
We are stumped here with our overdose of rats, which seem to arrive in waves from a neighbouring farm, where they are removing some buildings, presumably previously the rats homes.
They said it would get into the water systems and cause all kinds of problems with endangered species. There was also quite a bit of effing and blinding and, well, you know the kind of thing.
It seems as safe as anything else to me and should work pretty well.
Never have liked the plaster idea but poison is so dangerous to wildlife, second hand, as it were. Wouldn't it be lovely if one could get a small, killer robot to be a rat killer? Now THAT is a product I would buy, a 24/7 rat killer.
I mainly try to have rat proof cages and housing for my animal's safety, keep the food in rat-proof containers, and keep things as tidy as possible. Not because it deters or drops the numbers at all but so I don't get blamed for there being rats! It makes me mental to be blamed for a problem that is ever-present.
There are always rats!
In Florida, I would find stashes of baby bird bones stuffed into the roofing on my rabbit cages. The death those poor birds suffered being eaten alive.....
Just horrible.
I don't know if it is better than the other options but the rats in the water trap didn't seem to suffer much, they just swam a bit, got cold and sank. But even killing so many didn't make a dent in the problem.
Shame the UK has no nice big rat snakes, now those are good for getting rid of rats!
Nice to know that bleeding out is not too bad, I can add it to my friend telling me all about when she drowned and how lovely it was. Living and learning, I love it.