Our girl cat brought a rat she’d either killed or found already dead to our patio (she hasn’t done this for a few years).

As the wife and I discussed how best to dispose of it, we saw to our horror 3 large, purplish-black (2cm x 1.5cm?) fat larval things emerge from the rat’s abdomen. A quick web search (‘Vancouver Island rat botfly’) shows matching images. Eyyyyyych.

I bagged the carcass and captured the larvae in a jar for the moment… there’s a burn ban at the moment, so I can’t do that, but I don’t just want to throw them in the trash either so

  • Is burying them sufficient?
  • Are our two cats in any danger of infection? (I phoned our vet, no answer from them yet)
  • Should we notify the town pest control dept.?

There are lots of cats in the area besides our own, so we thought rats weren’t a big problem on our street. Now I’m not so sure.

EDIT: We didn’t want to wait any longer to deal with it, so I dug the deepest hole I could under some back bushes and squashed every larva I could find, in and out of the carcass, then buried everything. I hope that’s the end of that. Yuuuuuuuck.

  • meseek #2982
    1·
    10 months ago

    Not to mention it’s the fly that lays the larvae you need to worry about, not the actual larvae after it’s laid.

    Whatever has happened has happened with the rat. Chuck it in a bush and step on the larvae if you hate them that much. Or toss them all in a fire.

    Failing that, I have an uncle that does exorcisms. Very reasonable rates I can hook you guys up.