Why wild rats and mice deserve our compassion

Part one of a three-part series on living kindly alongside rodents. Yes, the ones in your roof too.

Years before I started NSW Hen Rescue, I fell into running a very small rodent rescue. It began when I was working on reception at the Katoomba RSPCA shelter. A lady walked in carrying a wicker picnic basket. She set it down on the counter and lifted the lid, and two little noses appeared, twitching, whiskers brushing the rim of the basket.

Ginger and Mr T were the first rats I had ever met. I was amazed by how sociable they were. How they adored each other. Ginger was the boss. Mr T was her faithful husband. I assumed they’d be rehomed in no time, so I was shocked when the manager said Ginger would be killed. She had a small lump that was either a tumour or a pregnancy, and either way that was a capital punishment offence at this shelter. I was only a month into my probation and technically not allowed to adopt. I took them home anyway.

From there, more rats found their way to me. Rats who had been returned to pet shops when they were no longer cute babies, or rats who were rescued from becoming snake food.

One small white rat, Summer, used to sit on my shoulder and groom my hair. Another rat, Fable, was a very talented thief, dashing out to snatch coins from our coin jar and ferry them back to her nest in her mouth, hopping like a little kangaroo. I learned I could clicker train them. I learned they loved tummy tickles. I learned how fiercely they bonded.

Then came my first little mouse, Edward. A girl of about eight knocked on my door one day, thrust a small cage into my hands and said, “My Dad told me to give you this.” Inside was a tan and white mouse with a limp. Edward loved gentle pats on the head so much he would choose them over food.

Edward the snuggle bug

So perhaps it doesn’t surprise you that I am now asking people to have compassion for rodents. Perhaps you’re nodding along, thinking yes, of course all pets deserve care. How shocking that anyone is cruel to them.

But wild rats?

Well yes.

I believe domestic rodents deserve kindness, but so do their wild cousins.

If you are in Australia you have probably seen recent reports of “mouse plagues” in farming communities and the government giving urgent permission to use deadly zinc phosphide to protect crops. It can kill rodents, but also pets, wildlife, farmed animals and humans. It also does a number on the environment when it gets into waterways. There’s no antidote. What a fab idea to drop this poison all over crops (eyeroll).

Of course rodents are living in plague numbers on farms. Are we really surprised? Unlimited food. Vast monocultures of grain grown to feed the animals humans will then slaughter.

What baffles me is why so much money goes into poison that causes painful death over days, rather than contraceptives or repelling technologies. Rodent contraceptives exist. They are being used successfully in parts of the US.

But the majority of people who live alongside a rodent population use poison, snap traps or glue traps.

Did you know glue traps are illegal to use in NSW, but perfectly legal to buy? Isn’t that so silly? When I found them stacked in a local dollar shop and politely explained to the staff they were no longer legal to use, the manager turned nasty as did another customer. People get very angry when you try to speak up for animals they believe are unworthy.

Meanwhile, the company in Australia who has the license for one of the US contraceptives, Evolve, hasn’t replied to any of my emails about it. Even if they did, it targets male rats. And as Karen Dawn pointed out in her recent article about a hippo cull, animal contraceptives that only target male fertility are a losing battle from the start. As she puts it: spay nine out of ten females and you’ll get one litter that season. Neuter nine out of ten males and you’ll get ten litters and one very proud papa.

In a world where we can never ensure that every animal receives the contraceptive, we must target the females to bring populations down.

That’s the big picture. But the same blind spot shows up in our own homes.

Some people already choose to avoid poisons due to the danger of secondary poisoning. Birds of prey, goannas, dogs and cats can die if they eat an animal who has been poisoned.

But I want to argue a less popular point. The rodents themselves are worthy of life. They deserve respect and compassion. They deserve not to suffer horribly and not to have their lives cut short for the crime of existing.

Our plumber once told me that if we ever wanted to “get rid of” the rats, we shouldn’t use RatX, Ratsak naturals or vitamin D3 poisons. It made the rats so unbearably thirsty as they were dying that they would chew through copper pipes to reach water. Can you imagine the suffering? And yet this stuff is stacked to the rafters at Bunnings and the supermarket, sold like sweets.

We do have a rat problem here at the hen haven. Not with the individual rats. They are funny to watch. They hop and play. Some of them even take my homemade herbal contraceptive bait straight from my hand. The problem is the group as a whole. Rats love to chew. Sometimes not even to get through something, just because it feels good to grind down their teeth.

The disease panic in Australia is wildly overblown (we have never had a human case of hantavirus here). And even in countries where rodent-borne disease is a real concern, the answer is the same as for any other wild animal we share space with: prevention and hygiene, not killing. I’ll cover the practical side in the next piece.

The fire risk from chewed wiring, however, is real. And still, I won’t reach for poison or snap traps, no matter how stretched I feel. I’m tackling the problem, just not by killing. There’s a kinder way, and we’ll cover it in parts two and three.

I’m often surprised at how alone I am in this position. Even people who already extend compassion to other animals seem to draw the line at rodents. On a recent r/Australianvegans thread, someone had asked for a kind solution for the rats in her roof. She was worried if she used a sonic repeller that the mother rat would abandon her babies.

One commenter,u/whibkins, who claimed to be a Buddhist who avoided causing harm, wrote, “I put poison traps down, which the mice or rats take back to the nest - eradicating them all.”

Another, u/Lanky-principle-8407, wrote, “When I thought we had rats I just paid an exterminator. I do so much for animals in other parts of my life.”

But the rats in u/Lanky-principle-8407’s roof are no less deserving of compassion than the animals they help elsewhere.

About a year ago I found two baby rats on the floor of my van. They were cold to the touch, lying about a metre apart in pools of condensation, eyes still closed. I later learned that mother rats sometimes scatter their babies when they sense a threat.

I warmed them in my hands and then near a snuggle safe heat pad until they began to wriggle. When they were warm, I started hand-feeding them every two hours, day and night. David would hold them after each feed and give them tiny massages. They grew up loving tummy tickles.

Did you know rats giggle? They let out a high pitched chirp, boggle their eyes and vibrate when they are happy.

Molly Marshmallow and LIzzy Licorice

We named the babies Molly Marshmallow and Lizzy Licorice and they are grown rat ladies now, with a wild streak and a deep love of each other. I see that same closeness in the wild rats in our feed shed, who sit bundled in tight family groups, the teenagers still following their mum closely.

The world where we casually scatter poison, or set a snap trap on a mother whose babies will then starve in the nest, needs to be changed for the better. People will say there are more important things to think about. But if we cannot be kind at this level, to the smallest and most vulnerable, I’m not sure we can really claim to be kind at all.

They are not a faceless infestation. They are somebody.

This is part one of a short series. Next up, how to prevent rodents in the home and around the sanctuary in the first place. And then the big one I am working through and experimenting with right now, how to deal with an existing infestation kindly, without any harm or killing. I will share with you the special trap we developed that enables us to separate lactating females to return to their nests, the results of my kind relocation in which I increase their survival chances with shelter, water and food, and my rodent contraceptive trials here at the sanctuary.

Is this something you have ever thought about before? I would love to hear.

Love Catherine x

P.S The regular scoop from the coop newsletter will be out soon. It has been such a busy vet time lately so there is lots to update you on.