Rats – A newfangled threat to human life!!!

As if wild boars and other animals were not enough, now we have to protect ourselves and our young ones from newfound threats like rats!

Rats primarily viewed as annoying little furry animals have fast turned themselves into a force to reckon with to the extent of being life-threatening.

In the recent past, there has been a slew of cases where encounters with rodents have culminated into life-threatening situations.

Below are two such incidents reported in newspapers worldwide which brought to our attention the extent of damage a measly rodent could do.

Giant rats eat two babies in South Africa townships in separate attacks

UPDATED: 10:46 GMT, 3 June 2011

• ‘I can’t forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out’ says dead baby’s mother
• The rats can grow up to three-foot long

 

Giant rats as big as cats have killed and eaten two babies in separate attacks in South Africa’s squalid townships this week.

 Lunathi Dwadwa, three, was killed as she slept in her parent’s shack in the Khayelitsha slum outside Cape Town and another girl was killed in Soweto township near Johannesburg the same day.

 Little Lunathi was sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor of her family’s breeze block and corrugated iron home on Sunday night when she died. Her puzzled parents didn’t even hear her scream.

 When her mother discovered her lifeless body, she saw that her daughter’s eyes had been gouged out.

Bukiswa Dwadwa, 27, said: ‘I can’t forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out.

 ‘She was eaten from her eyebrows to her cheeks, her other eye was hanging by a piece of flesh.’

Her father Mncedisi Mokoena said police told him: ‘Nothing could have done that but rats’

 And today police revealed that a baby girl died in the Soweto township when she was attacked by rats while her teenage mother was out with friends.

 ‘We were called to the scene of the death of an infant due to a rat attack on Monday morning at around 9am,’ said police officer Bongani Mhlongo.

 ‘The mother of the child was arrested on charges of culpable homicide and negligence.’

 The deaths appear to be part of a spate of deadly rat attacks in the country.

 Last month, 77-year-old grandmother Nomathemba Joyi died after giant rats chewed off the right side of her face.

 Residents of South Africa’s impoverished townships say the giant rats grow up to three-foot long, including their tails, and have front teeth over an inch long.

 The suspects in the baby attacks are believed to be African Giant Pouched Rats, a species only distantly related to UK rats, but native to sub-Saharan Africa – and the biggest in the world.

 They are nocturnal, omnivorous and can produce up to 50 young a year. Some tribal people breed them for food.

 They thrive in the townships’ filthy conditions and feast on residents’ uncollected rubbish.

These clueless parents have lost their children to a low life like a rodent! To die in such young age and in this manner is a death that one would wish for even for an enemy.

In yet another horrifying incident a young mother recounts how her 16-month old beautiful daughter was savaged by a giant rat as the youngster slept in her cot.

 

Giant rat attack horror: Baby savaged by foot-long rodent as she slept in cot

16 Nov 2012 19:10

Her panic-stricken mum rushed into the 16-month-old’s room after hearing screams and found her covered in blood with deep bite marks

 Ordeal: Mum Lindsey found baby Lolly covered in blood and a rat scurrying around the flat

A horrified mum told today how her toddler daughter was savaged by a giant rat as the youngster slept in her cot.

Panic-stricken Lindsey Molyneux rushed into 16-month-old Lolly’s room after hearing her screams and found her covered in blood with deep bite marks to her hand.

Husband Michael later photographed the foot-long rodent scurrying around the family’s one-bedroom flat.

Mum-of-two Lindsey said the beast, which they nicknamed Ratzilla, had also gnawed through terrified Lolly’s pyjama bottoms.

The 30-year-old said she had just settled down to watch I’m a Celebrity after putting Lolly and her twin sister Lily to bed when she heard her crying on the baby monitor.

Lindsey added: “I went in because I didn’t want her to wake Lily.

“She was shaking and I thought maybe she was just having one of her nightmares.

“She threw up on my shoulder so I walked her out of the bedroom, holding her over my left shoulder, sat her down on the floor on the kitchen and as I started to strip her I saw all the blood because I hadn’t seen it in the bedroom as it was dark.

“I just started screaming, I tried not to swear but every swear word was coming out.

“I screamed, ‘She’s bleeding, she’s bleeding.’ I couldn’t see where she was bleeding from then I suddenly saw her hand, you could just see that the blood was gushing out from there.

“The only way I could describe it is we were just befuddled, we just could not figure out what had happened.

“We’ve got no pets and there’s nothing around her bed that could do that.”

After managing to stop the bleeding, Lindsey called NHS Direct to see if they had any ideas.

Just then the huge rat raced past her, giving her the shock of her life.

She said: “I was on the phone to the nurse. I saw it at the door and it was about a foot long.

 “I went around the patio door, opened up the front door and as soon as I opened it up its legged it. You could clearly see it was a rat, the size of it was massive.”

A&E doctors confirmed it was a rat bite. Lindsey said her GP did not believe her story until she showed him the footage of the rodent.

Little Lolly received treatment for the bite and is recovering well.

The couple has since disinfected and cleaned their entire house in Camden, North London.

Council pest control experts have laid traps and checked nearby sewers.

Lindsey said the front door had been left open for half an hour earlier in the night of the attack to ventilate the house while ­engineer Michael cooked dinner.

But pest controllers were still unsure how the rat got in.

Lindsey added: “It’s not even the thought that it bit her, that’s bad enough, it’s just the thought that it was crawling on her.

“It’s got in once and I’m still afraid it can get in again.”

So why do these rodents enter our homes?

Rats/rodents enter our houses basically in the search for food as well as a warm place to live in. They roam around freely in homes in search for food and something to chew on to keep their incisors trimmed. One would wonder if they are conscious of their dental hygiene!

But the truth is rats have a pair of continuously growing incisors that need to be trimmed regularly. In order to do that rats chew on anything in their vicinity including cables, wires, plastics; literally anything they can lay their filthy paws on.

Rats not only invade your home and your privacy but they can also turn out to be life-threatening. There is no place on the earth that they can’t inhabit. You can’t escape them; you have to deal with them.

The right way of doing that is not by killing them as it offers a short-term solution to the problem. The right and only effective way of combating the rat menace is to find a way to keep them out of our homes and away from our loved ones.

We at C Tech Corporation understand this and after years of research have formulated a product that can address all our ratgrievances.Combirepel™ can best be described as a  extremely low toxicity and extremely low hazard and eco-friendly anti-rodent additive. It is available in lacquer form that can be applied on wooden articles and household furniture to keep rodents at bay. Combirepel™  works on a mechanism that can effectively repel rodents and keep them out of our houses for good.