I’ve just found a dead rat in my vegetable patch - now what?

[Legwork]

Where do I put it? And can any of the salad in there be eaten? I very much suspect someone poisoned it because it looks a picture of health, other than being a bit on the dead side.

Wrap it in a couple of carrier bags and put it in the bin.

The salad will be fine, I imagine there will be all sorts running all over our food that we don’t know about. Give it a good wash.

Thanks mylife. I’m not too worried that it was there scurrying about - the neighbourhood cats leave presents that I studiously ignore once I’ve removed the evidence - bit scared of rat poison though :-)

Ratatouille for dinner??

Don't read "Good Fences Aren't Always Enough" - a short story by Elizabeth George !

Unless you've just missed bin day and have to wait another fortnight, I would put it in the bin wrapped in a couple of plastic bags.

IglesiasPiggl landfill was literally yesterday… lovely May weather, should be back to wriggling around in 2 weeks. 😳 shame I don’t despise any of my neighbours.

Yep, double bag it, bin it and don’t worry.

Bung it in another bin then - I once double bagged and binned a dead hen in a bin outside Tesco because it was August and 2 weeks until our bin collection - the smell would have been awful!

Double bag and put in a public bin or if you have the space/stomach for it stick it in the freezer until bin day. Salad will be fine just wash as normal before eating.

I imagine the local foxes will have it if you leave it

Dig it in as fertilizer.

If it's two weeks until bin day, I'd dig a hole in the garden (away from the veg patch!) and bury it.

I wouldn't worry about your vegetables - as others have said, I'm sure there's plenty that scurries over the veg patch without you being aware, that's why it's standard practice to rinse before eating!

Thanks for all the replies - I’m not too worried about the rat itself - I’m sure there are dozens of them! I’m worried that it looks like it might have been poisoned - it looks to be a perfectly healthy animal that just dropped dead - I sort of imagine natural deaths involve finding a quiet dark spot rather than the Piccadilly Circus that is my garden. Perhaps not 🙂

If it has been poisoned this is not a good idea.

😏

I'd put it in compost heap & carry on.
Be happy it wasn't in many scattered body parts... we have cats.

You'd have to ingest the rat to get side effects from any poison the rat may have ingested. You'd see any rat poison that had been laid as it's usually blue.

Bit different but I had pet rats and one was healthy and just dropped dead for no reason, so yours may not necessarily be poisoned. They also hide illness very well so wouldn’t necessarily show signs of being unwell and still look healthy.

I have heard that poisoned rats/mice bleed out from eyes nose or mouth so it may be more likely it just died.

Right - rat has been sewn into a sail cloth with weights and given the proper send off (black bags in the landfill wheelie) and I will eat my little gems and radishes without excessive trepidation in a week or two. Will report back if I die, obvs.

When I read sail cloth and weights I was assuming you had buried it at sea! What is the purpose of the weights in the wheelie bin?

If you look at most dead creatures there will be blod from eyes & nose after a few days (sorry). Rat poison tends to kill by dehydration.

Is this a metaphor?
Please say you didn't sit with little ratty corpse at your sewing machine?

^ obs should have quoted OP there!

Bin the rat and wash the vegetables. Job done.

Pet rats tend to live longer than wildies as they don’t have the same risk of predators and poisoning and starvation so can drop dead of things like heart failure that wildies would tend not to live long enough to see - they don’t tend to live longer than a year in the wild, whereas 2 years is more common in pets.

It’s also not normal for rats to die of natural causes in a way that could cause predators to find their mischief. They tend to go off somewhere hidden to die if they haven’t been poisoned. It’s why a lot of pet rats will eat or bury their dead cagemates, instincts tell them to hide the bodies. Wildies will do similar so a dead rat out in the open does generally mean poison unfortunately.