In rural Arizona we deal with pack rats [0]. These are sometimes-destructive nuisances. For example, my father replaced his car's spark plug wires. The new wires rapidly disappeared - apparently rodents need to chew hard things to keep their teeth from getting too long. Father bought a second set of wires from the same company, which again rapidly disappeared. Apparently some kinds of spark plug wires are coated with rodent bait (peanut oil?). The third set of wires was from a different company. These did not have rat bait like the other company's wires.
My neighbor leaves their vehicle hoods open while on their rafting trips... he also uses live traps to catch and relocate the rats around his house. Otherwise pack rats will set up a nest in vehicles' engine area, destroying the wires and filling it with twigs and food.
An Arizona company [1] came up with a sort of poison that only targets rodents' reproductive organs: "ContraPest contains the ovotoxic chemical 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which is a known killer of oocytes in immature ovarian follicles. The rat version of ContraPest also contains triptolide, which the company reports has adverse reproductive effects on both males and females. The product has been successfully used to sterilize both male and female mice, rats, and dogs." [2]
As "Mr. Pack Rat" explains, it's better to understand the pack rat than to indiscriminately poison them, as rodent predators fall victim to secondary poisoning with standard city-rat poisons, which makes pack rat problem worse [3].
Oh gosh, packrats are such a PIA. They seem to love garages when they can get in -- I guess no snakes, no birds of prey, no bobcats, etc. And this thing about chewing wires in cars.
My neighbor leaves their vehicle hoods open while on their rafting trips... he also uses live traps to catch and relocate the rats around his house. Otherwise pack rats will set up a nest in vehicles' engine area, destroying the wires and filling it with twigs and food.
An Arizona company [1] came up with a sort of poison that only targets rodents' reproductive organs: "ContraPest contains the ovotoxic chemical 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which is a known killer of oocytes in immature ovarian follicles. The rat version of ContraPest also contains triptolide, which the company reports has adverse reproductive effects on both males and females. The product has been successfully used to sterilize both male and female mice, rats, and dogs." [2]
As "Mr. Pack Rat" explains, it's better to understand the pack rat than to indiscriminately poison them, as rodent predators fall victim to secondary poisoning with standard city-rat poisons, which makes pack rat problem worse [3].
[0] https://www.mrpackrat.net/packrats.html#six
[1] https://senestech.com
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest
[3] https://www.mrpackrat.net/poison.html#fou