Originally Decon was just a mixture of corn meal and portland cement, hardly dangerous poisons. The principle was that rats and mice cannot regurgitate what they have eaten. Then the cement would harden and the rodent would starve.
Somewhere along the line Warifin, a blood anticoagulant, was added to the mix to cause the rodent to bleed to death internally. Al, K9SI <snip> Rat poison (Decon, etc) works, but you have to realize HOW it works - it's a two-part mix. When the rat eats it, the first part is a drug that makes him thirsty. He leaves the building, finds water, and drinks. Thats when the second part goes into action - the poison dissolves and kills him. He's supposed to die outside at the water hole. At least that's what the plan was. But even good plans fail. And if the rat has already drank, the poison dissolves immediately after he eats it and you have dead rats all over the place. Or if the mouse or rat does get outside, a snake can eat him. Then you get secondary kills of beneficial life forms (the snakes keep the mouse and rat population down). Then the hawk catches and eats the dying snake, and the hawk dies. Overall, it's better to plug the holes first than to spread poison around. Mike WA6ILQ <snip>