A farmer in Fulbaria upazila of Mymensingh has had success against the rats that poison bait fails to kill, with a trap made from local materials. Darul Islam's trap uses bamboo, jute rope and a discarded bicycle or rickshaw tube; in the last Aus season he used it on his own 10 kathas of land and killed more than three hundred rats. This Aman season the trap is spreading to the farmers around him.

Darul Islam farms in Anuhadi village of Rangamatia union. He sells each trap for Tk 100, and many farmers in the village have bought four or five to set in paddy and other crop fields.

Making one takes a bamboo piece four inches thick and a foot long, a second piece three inches thick and a foot and a half long, jute rope and an old bicycle or rickshaw tube. He says it catches rats in rice and other crops, even in fields standing in water. "Anyone can make this rat-killing device very easily," he said.

Abdur Rahman, a farmer in the same village, said bait bought at the market often fails to kill the rats, which simply move from one field to the next, while many villagers have controlled rats with the bamboo trap. Another farmer, Jahangir Alam, said the trap works well: rats that are hard to control with bait are caught in it easily.

Shah Alam, the sub-assistant agriculture officer for the area, said farmers usually turn to poison bait when rats multiply in their fields, which can push the rats from one plot to another. He described Darul Islam's trap as effective, saying it caught about 300 rats in the Aus season and that other farmers have used it with success.

He added a caution: rat control needs the neighbouring farmers to act together, not one farmer alone. For the Aman crop, a cheap trap that works where bait does not is most useful when a whole block of fields takes it up at once.

The report is by Dhaka Mail's Mymensingh correspondent, M A Kalam.

Source: Dhaka Mail