When I was a kid we had rats one winter and the pest company used a rat poison that worked so good. He said they made the rats look for water and most would die outside. But if they did die inside they wouldn’t smell. He said the poison dehydrated them so there would be odor. I was on your site and the bait I found didn’t say anything about making them not smell if they died in the wall. Which one does this or did they stop making it?
Unfortunately there is no magical rodenticide that can either make a dead animal not smell OR chase them outside forcing them to seek water. Personally I’ve been in pest control for about 45 years and back in the 80’s, had customers request bait like this. My boss at the time told me and the other techs that the bait we were using would do this.
A few years later I was working at a different firm and there I learned there never was any type of rodenticide that can do this. The training department there explained that at some point in time, service companies were making all kinds of claims to get a sale but there was never any data to support the claim.
Later in my career this subject would come up from time to time and it became a topic of humor. At some point we all realized this old wives tale must have started in the 60-s or 70’s and just kind of stuck around like an urban legend.
At this time I can state there is no such product. So if you encounter a rodent issue this fall or winter and don’t want dead animals in your attic, go with our KILL TRAPS or LIVE TRAPS. This is by far the safest way to avoid odor issues that can be time consuming to resolve.
We just now checked with AI and you can see what answer it provided below. We asked “is there any rodenticide that will cause rats/mice to forage outside seeking water AND if they were to die inside the home, they would effectively be so dehydrated that they would have no odor?”
There aren’t many AI models that do well answering pest control questions but this one got it right!
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