Now that winter has decended on new england, the mice are comming indoors.
It seems that I am never able to set the traps enough askew that the very
small mice I have set it off. I'm using the smallest victor traps made.
Hereing the mice in the walls at night sets my mind working. I don't want
to use poison because the mice crawl away and die in the walls after a few
days. They will rot and create quite a stink. I seem to remember hearing
that nicotine is fairly toxic. I assume death is by anurism or cardiac
arrest. How long does it take for an accute overdose of nicotine to kill?
I could look up the oral LD50 of nicotine in mice, but this gives me little
help in my situation. How can I estimate the dose requred give, say a 90%
mortality rate within 30 minutes?
What is the safest method for extracting nicotine from tobacco/nicotine
withdrawl aides? How sweet does the bait have to be to get the mice to
injest the (bitter?) nicotine?
What about other easily available compounds for use as fast-acting rat
poisons? Alcohol evaporates too rapibly, and stricnine and cyanide are
restricted. Will ephedrine/pseodoephedrine synergize well with nicotine?
What about cafine? What about sodium hypochlorite,lye (very bitter)
,sodium floride/potassium chloride (speed of action, flavor, dosage)? Is
GHB synthesis legal? What about extracts from otc sleeping pills? What
could be mixed with a slower acting poison to make the mose too lethargic
to crawl back into its hole? Would these increae the lethal dose of
nicotine?
I realize that this is probably impractical, but it's as much a mental
exercise as anything.
It may be as late as jan. 4 before I can read this newsgroup agian, so
please email responses to karlm at geocities dot com or karlm at mit dot edu.
Thanks in advance,
Karl
BTW, why are most commercial rat poisons anticoagulants? I'm sure that
there are cheaper agents that are just as lethal, acetominophin,
acetylsalicilic acid, and methyl salicilate, for example.
