Originally Decon was just a mixture of corn meal and portland cement,
hardly dangerous poisons. The principle was that rats and mice cannot
regurgitate what they have eaten. Then the cement would harden and the
rodent would starve.
Somewhere along the line Warifin, a blood anticoagulant, was added to
the mix to cause the rodent to bleed to death internally.
Al, K9SI
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Rat poison (Decon, etc) works, but you have to realize HOW it
works - it's a two-part mix. When the rat eats it, the first part
is a drug that makes him thirsty. He leaves the building, finds
water, and drinks.
Thats when the second part goes into action - the poison dissolves
and kills him. He's supposed to die outside at the water hole. At
least that's what the plan was. But even good plans fail. And if the
rat has already drank, the poison dissolves immediately after he eats
it and you have dead rats all over the place.
Or if the mouse or rat does get outside, a snake can eat him. Then
you get secondary kills of beneficial life forms (the snakes keep the
mouse and rat population down). Then the hawk catches and eats
the dying snake, and the hawk dies.
Overall, it's better to plug the holes first than to spread poison around.
Mike WA6ILQ
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