Say no to rat poisons
To the editor:
Recently, the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife treated a young bobcat that was admitted after showing little or no energy in a local yard. It was diagnosed as having consumed a rat that had been poisoned with a second-generation anticoagulant, which causes a slow death to the rat and any creature that eats the rat.
“Anticoagulant rodenticide exposure can lead to uncontrolled bleeding in any part of the body, but this is not always obvious. Difficulty breathing, weakness, and lethargy have been seen in animals poisoned with anticoagulant rodenticides.”
Christmas Bird Counts of red-shouldered hawks for the past five years show an average of 13 of the birds; in the ’90s, the average counts were 55. A favorite food of the red-shouldered hawk is the brown rat. For an island that prides itself on living with nature, we are doing a poor job of protecting our hunters, those creatures that consume the pests. The city of Sanibel has no authority to control the use of rodenticides — the state of Florida has kept that authority at the state level. So it is up to all of us, the residents of Sanibel, to tell our pest control companies to stop using second-generation anticoagulant poisons to control rats. There are many modern traps on the market today that are being used to deal with rat problems. Please, please, look for alternatives to the anticoagulants being randomly used today.
John MacLennan
Sanibel