"Perry O'Dontal-Surgery" wrote in message
...
... what am I going to do?

I disturbed a small one a few weeks ago - it was sat atop the pile when I
removed the lid from our green compost bin. I kept quiet about it, knowing
the furore it would cause amongst the female members of the household,

?

I saw a rat today, walking vfrom under the hen coop and under the log pile
under the bread oven. I didn't do whatever the verb from 'furore' is :-)

Mr Death of Rats from the council has been today, and put down poison. He
has advised us not to put any fruit or veg trimmings in the bin. Seems to
me we might as well not bother with a compost bin in that case.

And not much point in putting down poison. The rat you saw might eat it and
die but more rats will move in - Nature abbhors a vacuum is especially trued
in respect of rats.

You can buy a rat trap - like a mouse trap only bigger. They're effective.
But only for so long (see above).

I'm more inclined to resite the bin atop a rubble foundation, to make it
hard if not impossible to burrow into. What is exercising me most at the
moment is this: if rats have been living in my compost heap for a while
now, and adding their own potentially Weyl-laden excreta to it, is the
existing compost still fit to be spread upon the garden at all?

You're very unlikely to be infected by Weil's disease in that situation.
You're more likely to be infected by human-borne diseases.

Mary