Cover up

[Plank 8]

I am a smallholder. Sometimes I use poison against rats. Occasionally I have noticed the poison had been covered up with dead leaves and things. Most recently my elderly neighbour was worried about a rat in her greenhouse and asked for help. I used poison as I have a lockable bait box and she has grandchildren. The next day the 90 degree turn from the tunnel through the box to the poison chamber was stuffed with leaves. She said no-one had been near it and her grandchildren had not visited.

 

On another occasion I was putting poison down in an open dish in a secure garage. The poison had been going down daily and I had been topping it up. Then one day the poison stopped going down and a layer of leaves and twigs appeared over the poison. The next day the same. Have other people had similar experiences? What is going on?

[fellman 116]

field mice covering their "food" for a later date basicaly hiding it so they can eat it later

[donky7 9]

if the stuff is going regular.... they are more likely caching it too................ for a rainy day'

[swamp thang 16]

I noticed in my home that after rats have eaten poison and start to get sick, they go into a frenzy of nest-building - tearing up paper and stuffing it into hurried nests, in what seems like a last ditch attempt to breed before they die, I take it to be a hard-wired survival instinct that kicks in when the rat senses death is near.

 

That being said though, what you are seeing could be simply an attempt to hide the bait for rainy-day storage, as others have mentioned here.