The Electric Chair is a humane, easy and non-toxic method to eliminate pesky, disease-ridden rats and mice.
BENEFITS
- Humane - no blood, no guts, no animal mangling and no lingering painful death by deadly poisons. Rodents just quickly drop dead inside the trap.
- Easy - no handling of corpses. Simply grab the trap, tip out the dead rodent, from the smallest mouse to the biggest rat, turn the Electric Chair off and on again to reset it. Yell out ‘NEXT!’
- Harm minimisation - no secondary kills from poisoned rodents being eaten by native birds of prey, livestock or pets who can then also die.
- No odour - no poisoned rodents running off to places unknown for a long slow death by chemicals, creating a big, enduring stink and maggots as they slowly rot in the ceiling or by dropping into cavity walls or machinery.
- No contamination of stock feed by poisoned rodents dying in silos of food.
- Simplicity. Tip zapped rodents out of The Electric Chair and keep on going. Drop them into a rubbish bin, or into the chook yard if you are not using poisons on the property. Chooks turn freshly zapped rodents into much-needed protein to produce good feathers and eggs. Or leave zapped rodents in the same place in the yard or on a fence-post for birds of prey to swoop in to collect. Or bury zapped rodents in compost bins to turn them into nitrogen fertilizer.
- No poisonous snakes hunting their favourite rodents in your chook shed when you keep the rodent population down.
- 12 month warranty.
RODENT FUN FACTS
- Rats and mice are prolific breeders. There is never just one rat or mouse. They live in social groups of 150 to 250 rodents, all breeding up rapidly and in large numbers. At around 30 days, newborn mice are ready to breed.
- Rats are at it 20 times a day to breed up the maximum number of progeny.
- Typically, rats and mice come inside in bigger numbers when summer temperatures start going down. Rodents will make your home their home for a cosy Autumn and Winter, for shelter and to breed up in vast numbers.
- When rodents have set up camp in your ceiling cavity, in sheds or under the bonnet of vehicles with warm motors after parking, (including a Maserati customer with $25,000.00 of rodent damage and a large expensive agricultural machine that needed complete re-wiring) they will keep their two constantly-growing front teeth under control by chewing the insulation off electrical wiring to wear down their teeth. Insulation removal uncovers the bare copper underneath. This live wire sparks into combustible material and up she goes. Estimates show that damage by rodents can be the cause of around 20% of building fires and insurance claims with an unidentified cause, put down to "an electrical fault.”
- Feral rats have a tail that is longer than the body. They came to Australia by running down the mooring ropes with the First Fleet and bred and spread across Australia thereafter. They are here to stay but you can manage your property.
- Avoid egg loss as rats carry off eggs from the laying boxes of aviaries and chook sheds.
- Rats have been known to bite babies in cots and bed-ridden people. Rodents are meat eaters.
STEP ONE
Where to use The Electric Chair
Take action against invasive rats and mice, early and ongoing.
The efficient ELECTRIC CHAIR is excellent for use in homes, businesses, restaurants, garages, agricultural machinery storage sheds, aircraft hangars, workshops, dairies, chook sheds, aviaries, feed sheds, offices, warehouses and factories or in whichever building has a rodent problem.
Identify the infestation area/s. If there is more than one area, you will zap more rodents faster with additional Electric Chairs spaced around 20 meters apart. If you already know where the invasive rats or mice have set up, go to STEP TWO.
Check for rat or mouse droppings. If in doubt about the location, throw a handful of flour thinly on the surface, under cover from rain and wind. Place around five pieces of dried dog or cat food in the centre of the flour area, the whiffier the better. Come back in the next day or two, to see what footprints walked through the flour, and the size of the droppings that may be left behind. If they are small footprints and the food bait is taken, it is most likely rats and mice. You may also hear them scratching, mating and running in your ceilings, day and night.
STEP TWO
Trap assembly
Unpack and assemble the two-part Electric Chair. The top half of the trap controls the power and settings. The bottom half is where the action is.
The Electric Chair gives you both battery and mains electricity power options.
Choose either battery power or 240 volt plug-in power. For 240 volts, plug the power cord provided in the box into the back panel of the trap to deliver the charge that electrocutes rodents. Your own electrical extension cable can be added when there is not a nearby power point to plug into.
The battery cover is under the lid. Batteries required are four round D Cell size. They do not come in the box. The heavier the batteries are by weight, the better quality and the more zaps come from The Electric Chair before needing to replace the batteries. Put the inferior lightweight batteries back on the shop shelf. Check the fine print Use-By date on battery packs. Insert batteries and replace the battery cover.
Rechargeable batteries do not have the required full voltage zapping power of non-rechargeable batteries.
STEP THREE
Set your trap
Put food bait in the recessed bait holder on the rear lower half of the trap. Use around five or so fresh dried dog or cat food pieces to create the wafting food smell. You do not need truckloads of bait. When using wet or greasy bait such as peanut butter or fresh meat, place it in a used bottle cap inside the bait holder to prevent making a mess of the metal floor which reduces the effectiveness of the trap.
Line up the top half of the trap with the four slots on the base of the trap and push the top forward until it clicks into place. This process gets smoother after a few uses and the trap wears in.
When using 240 volt power, slide on the power adaptor provided for Australian power points and plug its lead into the back of the trap and the other lead end into a power point.
When the trap is turned on at its switch, a green light on the top of the trap is followed by a red light flashes to indicate that it is armed and ready. The red light flashes intermittently when the power to it is on.
Place the Electric Chair in the position most likely to attract rodents. Inside a building, place them along the edge of a wall as rodents instinctively use this edge area to run along, rather than being an easy target for predators in open spaces. They also urinate as they run to give the other rodents in their tribe a scent trail to follow in the dark. Under a bench top can be good, where they have visual cover.
Rodents can be wary at first of new objects placed in their home/your home. They may walk around it cautiously before entering the trap. They in head towards the food smell at the back of the trap, stepping from the first metal floor plate to the second floor plate. And ZAP! The rodent completes the electrical loop and the charge fires. Zapping goes for two minutes to ensure the rodent is 100% dead. It automatically turns itself off, otherwise the non-stop charge would use all the battery charge on one rodent.
Dispose of the zapped rodent, replace the bait, reset the trap by turning its switch off and back on again and put it straight back to work.
After you are no longer zapping rodents at the first location, position it in the next most likely rodent population location.
Leave the Electric Chair on all year round to zap the strays you did not know you had, before they get a chance to breed up in big numbers. However, check traps often, daily is better, to avoid letting a dead rodent putrefy inside the trap. Their body fluids can damage the trap and future rats and mice with not go near the lingering smell of death inside the trap. If you are absent for a few days or longer, do not set the trap if you are not there to empty it.
STEP FOUR
Maintenance, Safety and Common Sense
Same as a mobile phone, avoid putting The Electric Chair out in the rain and weather. To use the trap outside, such as in a vegie patch or under overhanging roof eaves, find an old larger Tupperware-type container, cut an archway in one side wall, place and set the trap inside the container. Put the lid back in place. This archway entry allows access for rodents to enter straight into the trap. Avoid placing this set-up where puddles can form and drown the trap. The Electric Chair and moisture in the air do not get on.
When using The Electric Chair out of your line of sight, such as up in a cavity ceiling or hidden behind a shipping container, the box comes with an extension lead with a light on its end to plug into the rear of trap. When this small light is flashing and the trap is beeping, it has done its job and is letting you know to empty the dead rodent and reset the trap.
If placing The Electric Chair on an overhead beam being used as a rodent highway, tie the trap in position so that it does not fall off the beam.
Avoid placing The Electric Chair up near a hot tin roof in Summer. Extreme heat will kill the trap and void the one-year warranty.
In times of biblical-sized rodent plagues, place the Electric Chair where you or your children sleep at night and elsewhere in daylight hours.
For safety and prevention reasons, people fitted with Pacemakers and compromised health conditions should not use The Electric Chair.
Keep children away from the trap when it is turned on.
Anything small enough to walk inside this trap will be zapped. If dogs or cats reach their paw down to the back of this trap, they are likely to be zapped. They are then educated, like a bull once stung by an electric fence, unlikely to come back for seconds. Same if a child is left to play with the trap. It hurts.
If in doubt, place a wire cage basket over the set trap and weigh the cage down with a house brick to prevent pets and young kids from touching the active trap but still allowing rodents to get inside the trap.
When using The Electric Chair in chook sheds, place it inside a plastic bag to prevent dust and chook manure from landing on the trap. Use elastic bands to hold the bag in place and ensure the open end of the trap is not obstructed. Clean the floor of dust weekly. The trap does not seem to attract or bother chooks. Check the trap for chook house catches at least once a day.
STEP FIVE
Cleaning The Electric Chair
With use and time, the floor of the trap will collect dust and other debris. It then needs cleaning. Rodents can cumulatively empty their bladder when being zapped. This dries into crystals. Greasy food bait can spread a mess on the floor. It is much easier to clean when the top slides off the base of the trap.
After zapping a rodent and before resetting, the metal floor of the trap can easily be wiped clean with water on a wet paper towel.
To use the Electric Chair at its optimal performance level, do a maintenance deep clean after every two or three months of use, depending on how much traffic has been through the trap. Start this process by sliding off the top half and removing all bait from the lower half of the trap.
Soak and cover the entire base overnight (never let the top half of the trap get wet) in PLAIN COLD WATER. Never use hot water, soaps, detergents, metho or any other chemical in contact with the trap. Rodents will not go near it again. You just shot yourself in the foot if you used chemicals to clean the trap.
Next morning, drain and wipe dry the shiny, water-soaked trap floor. Sit it in the sun to warm it and evaporate all the water out which is hidden behind the metal plates. Or use gentle warmth from a hairdryer to evaporate all the residual water. Avoid hot settings.
Bait, assemble and put the dry trap back to work.
Happy hunting.