Rat season on the atolls

Every wet season the calls start the same way. Someone has found droppings behind the stock, or a bag has been opened from underneath. By the time a rat is visible during daylight the population is already well established, because rats are nocturnal and only forage in the open when there are too many of them competing at night.

The pattern is driven by the rain. Standing water and heavier vegetation give rodents cover and food outside, numbers build through the wet, and then the first dry stretch pushes them indoors looking for water. That is the week the phone starts ringing.

What it actually costs

Businesses tend to think of rodent damage as the value of the spoiled stock, which is usually the smallest part of it. The costs that hurt land later.

• Contaminated stock beyond what you can see. A rat will urinate along its run, so the sacks either side of the chewed one are usually condemned too.
• A failed inspection. Droppings in a food storage area are hard to explain away, and a re-inspection costs you trading time as well as the fee.
• Wiring and structural damage. Rodents gnaw constantly to keep their incisors down. Cabling in a ceiling void is a common casualty and an expensive one.
• Reputation. On Tarawa word travels quickly, and a customer who sees a rat in a dining room tells everyone.

Three things worth doing before the season

Get stock off the floor and away from the walls

Rats run along edges rather than across open ground, so a pallet pushed against a wall is a covered highway. Half a metre of clear space between stock and wall does two things: it removes the run, and it means you can see droppings early rather than finding them months later when you finally shift the pallet.

Deal with water before you deal with food

Most premises are careful about food and much less careful about water. A dripping tap, a blocked drain or an uncovered tank will support a population that has no reliable food source at all. Fixing the water is often the cheapest single thing a business can do.

Seal the entry points while it is still dry

A young rat gets through a gap the width of your thumb. Door sweeps, vent screens and the gaps where pipework enters a building are the usual routes. Proofing is far easier before the wet than during it, and it is the part of a treatment that keeps working after we have left.

If you have already found droppings

Do not sweep them dry, because the dust carries disease. Damp them down first. Photograph what you found and where, which helps target the inspection. Leave the stock where it is until we have looked, so the runs stay readable. And call rather than laying supermarket bait, which tends to move a problem around rather than clear it.

When to bring us in

For a household, when you have seen droppings or heard movement in the roof. For a business, before the season rather than during it, and on a quarterly cycle if you store food or back onto scrub or the lagoon. A treatment arranged in advance costs less and interrupts trading less than an emergency call-out with an inspection due.

You can read what a rodent treatment involves, including what we need from you beforehand, on our services page.