Jackie and Loretta were born on the north side of Chicago, and lucky for them, my best friend Sage Espindola was looking to adopt.
These two 12-ounce munchkins had particular personalities. Jackie, with her black-and-white fur, was rambunctious, while Loretta had a softer demeanor, sporting a gray-white soft coat.
And then, in 2020, Jackie and Loretta accidentally ate rat poison.
Late at night after watching a movie, I heard the cries of Sage, who found one of her rats joyfully marching around with a piece of wrapping paper. Once Sage picked Loretta up, she realized what it was. A former tenant had stuffed rat poison back in the crack of her closet, and her curious pets had retrieved it for a little show and tell.
The household immediately jumped into a panicked frenzy. The response wasn’t a one-man job. Sage and I, plus roommates and her former boyfriend, all began feverishly googling, calling, and talking over one another. Eventually, Sage and her boyfriend decided to drive her rats to an emergency clinic in Skokie—the only one open 24 hours—in an attempt to rescue them before they died from the poison.
After a $500 vet bill, the girls survived. Loretta would go on to struggle with hair loss and general fatigue, but Jackie stayed her energetic self, possibly because she ate less poison or none at all.
“My baby bounced back quick,” says Sage about Jackie. “She was strong as a mule.”
Still, Loretta only lasted three more months after ingesting the poison and is buried in Humboldt Park. Jackie went on to make the move to New York City, living with her dog brother, Bucky, and was eventually buried in Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn after a long life of a little over three years. Both girls are buried under a pile of flowers.
How poison affects your pet
So what exactly happened inside of Jackie and Loretta’s bodies after they ate the poison? Experts agree that it’s a complicated question. Since there are so many different rat poisons, they all work in different ways.
“Many will work by preventing the clotting of blood, leading to uncontrollable bleeding internally and subsequent death. Others work by damaging the central nervous system,” says Melissa Giese from Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital in Skokie.
Chief of staff Byron de la Navarre opened Animal House of Chicago in 2003 and says, “Rat poison has been around for a long time, and rats are pretty smart, so they had to change poisons and add different types of poison. And so, different poisons work differently.”
De la Navarre goes on to explain that rats “have their standard things that they always eat. They recognize how it smells, how it looks, how it tastes. And they feel fine eating that stuff. And then every day they come up with something new.”
Rat bait is usually scented and flavored to attract animals. Peanut butter or sweet tastes are among the most popular flavors.
If rats eat a tiny amount of something dangerous or poisonous, they know to avoid it going forward. “So even if you put a big whole block of rat poison down there, they aren’t going to eat the whole thing. They’re just going to take a nibble. And that’s why rat bait works over time. There are very few poisons that kill them right off,” he says.
Rats will return to their poison, and then weeks later, they will die from an internal hemorrhage.
“Most of the poisons work like warfarin, which is a blood thinner,” says de la Navarre.
Essentially, the poison gets into their system and they end up bleeding internally, and sometimes externally through the nose and eyes. “It’s not a nice way to go,” adds de la Navarre.
Rats aren’t the only victims of poisoning, either. The United States Environmental Protection Agency says that more than 100 pets die each year from exposure to rat poison.
When it comes to dogs, de la Navarre says, “They’ll just eat everything and swallow it,” which makes their poison-ingesting situation much more critical.
“If you can, make them vomit,” says de la Navarre.
However, he warns that some toxins are even dangerous to puke, as they are acids and can tear the esophagus on their way back up.
This is where poison control comes in.
When Jackie and Loretta ate their poison dinner, Sage was instructed by the vet to call poison control before bringing them in. In the heat of the moment, every second counts, and the last thing we wanted to do was call poison control to hear that, yes, in fact, they ate poison.
But de la Navarre sheds some insight into the situation: he says that poison control tells the vet what type of poison it is, and this can inform vets so that they know how to treat it.
Giese says, “Depending on the type of poison, we may add additional treatment—it really is important for us to have as much information as possible to have the best chance of the pet surviving.”
Treating your poisoned rat
Surviving rat poisoning, as a rat, depends on how much they have eaten and how often they’ve eaten it.
Giese says, “A majority of any toxin ingestion includes flushing the system with fluid therapy and administering medications to counteract or absorb toxic materials such as charcoal.”
De la Navarre says activated charcoal is “designed, even in people, to bind the toxin in your system, in your stomach, in your small intestine and hopefully make it not available to you. Meaning, it’s not going to kill you because it’s been bound up in this activated or detoxified charcoal.”
Another type of treatment is vitamin K, which is given by injection by the veterinarian and orally in the days following. “Giving your rat the appropriate dose gets their levels back up pretty quickly,” says de la Navarre.
“I had to give them medications for months afterward,” says Sage, who had to squirt the vitamin K liquid into their “little mouths daily.”
De la Navarre says that city poison can oftentimes be much more aggressive, more challenging, and more dangerous to treat.
Rats are generally more prone to illness than other pets, too. They have a laundry list of ailments like benign and malignant tumors, respiratory diseases, eye diseases, and dental diseases.
If your pet rat has a decrease or increase in appetite, thirst, urination, diarrhea, frequent sneezing, fur issues, scabs, wounds, or wheezing sounds, take them to an exotic vet hospital.
It’s generally advised to take rats in for a health check at least once a year for their first two years of life and then six months from then on.
Places that treat rats:
Chicago Exotic Animal Hospital, 3757 Dempster Street, Skokie
Animal House of Chicago, 2752 W. Lawrence, Suite 3
Paws and Feathers Veterinary Clinic, 3674 N. Elston
Midwest Birth and Exotic Animal Hospital, 7510 W. North Avenue, Elmwood Park
TLC First Animal Hospital, 6468 N. Milwaukee
Rat poisoning isn’t going away anytime soon, and if anything, it’s evolving to keep up with these smart animals. Chicago is still the rattiest city in the country, with more than 214,000 people calling in complaints from 2019 to 2022.
In order to ensure your rental home or surrounding property is rat poison-free, de la Navarre suggests asking the landlord if they have used poison in the home. Even pest exterminators—including the ones who say they are pet-friendly—may not have the safest products for pets.
“Rats are incredibly smart creatures that form bonds with their owners and cagemates,” says Giese. “They can be trained to do all sorts of things or can simply be a companion to share snacks with while you watch a movie. They are also very cute, which never hurts.”
Rats are known to be highly social, intelligent, and affectionate. They constantly want to cuddle, play, and run around greeting everyone in the room.
Before Loretta and Jackie, I wasn’t a fan of rats. Actually, you couldn’t catch me near one. I’d be screaming in an alleyway if I saw one dart between dumpsters. But by the end of their tiny lives, Jackie and Loretta were my nieces. Knowing them changed my whole perception of rats, rat care, and the love that these domesticated rodents can exude.