# Bite marks on my soap, could it be rat?



## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

I check my soap (that's been curing for a while) this morning and found out that some of them have bite marks on them. 

This is my 100% rice bran oil with manuka honey, no fragrance:




This is my salt bar with rice bran oil and coconut oil, with lavender eo:



screenshot utility

These are the type and condition:
1. rice bran oil and coconut soap - no bite at all
2. rice bran oil and coconut salt bar, with lavender eo - many bite mark as seen on pic 2
3. rice bran oil with manuka honey soap - many bite mark as seen on pic 1, the worse of them all. All bars have bite marks on them.
4. rice bran oil with manuka honey soap, with peppermint leaves - no bite mark at all
5. lye heavy sweet almond oil soap - 1 or 2 bite mark
6. lye heavy coconut oil soap - 1 or 2 bite mark

I could have sworn that my house is rat-free, but the bite mark seemed to proved me wrong. Sometimes there are cockroaches though, but the bite mark looks like it was from a rat. 

My soap also been curing for a while now, the one with manuka honey are in their third week, and I have no problem curing it in their current location, which is in my living room. I think this happened just last night. 

Does anyone know how to keep away pest away from your soap? Is naphthalene ball effective? 

I cut away the bitten part and for good measure I also 'peel' away the outer layer of the soap. Will this be enough to make sure that there's no pest-related germ stay on my soap? Or should I just throw away the whole bar?


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## Susie (Mar 16, 2014)

I use the plastic snap traps or glue traps to catch rodents.  My sis-in-law sometimes gets them in the animal feed.  Do NOT use poison, they die in inconvenient places, then you have to live with the smell for 3 weeks.  And no smell on earth will chase off rats and mice once they locate a food source.

That looks more like claw marks to me, but I am not an expert.


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

now that you mentioned it, it does looks like claw mark. They clawed the soap first and then eat it?


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## seven (Mar 16, 2014)

tikus! zomg!  gosh, i loathe them!

you know, from the size of the bite marks, it could very well possibly be rats, or whatever nasty lil critter. 
i personally would throw them away. just imagining their nasty (and dirty, you never know what diseases they have) lil self crawling all over the soap is enough to make go for the trash bin.

you have no choice but to catch the **** thing, otherwise no naphtalene ball (kamper) is able to prevent the rat (i'm hoping there was only 1) from returning. rats nowadays are smart. once we put traps with ikan asin in it in my old house, they still manage to get the fish and avoiding the trap altogether, grrrrrr....


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

I guess I do need to have rat trap in my house and see whether this is indeed rats. Now that susie talk about claw mark, I was thinking that it might be gaeko (cicak) though. I know that I have plenty of those in my house. 

This is so frustrating, maybe I'll try to cure my soaps in different places next time, so if one location is compromised by pest, I won't lose the whole batch.


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## Lin (Mar 16, 2014)

I've had rats as pets, definitely look like rat bite marks to me.


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## Silverwolf (Mar 16, 2014)

Definitely a rat considering the peppermint was untouched which is a natural rodent repellant.


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## seven (Mar 16, 2014)

i dont think it's cicak or geckos (the bigger nasty kind). the feet marks are different. theirs are more spread out.


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## grayceworks (Mar 16, 2014)

Those are rat/rodent teeth marks. They have those long sets of double-teeth in front, very sharp, and constantly growing.


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

I guess this was rats after all . 

Before I chuck the soaps in the bin, does anyone have an idea on an alternative use for the 'contaminated' soap for? It seemed like a waste to just throw it away. I'll definitely won't use it for my skin or laundry.


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## Dennis (Mar 16, 2014)

Put a chunk of the rice bran with honey soap in a rat trap or...

[ame="http://youtu.be/o5wxqFQj76U"]http://youtu.be/o5wxqFQj76U[/ame]


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

Even though the method in the clip is the one that I prefer, my country doesn't allowed the sale of the chosen tools . Rat baits it is then. Thank you for making me laugh Dennis, I need that after the seeing the bite marks.


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## fuzz-juzz (Mar 16, 2014)

Yeap, rats. It does look like their bite marks.
We have a pet rat.


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## Obsidian (Mar 16, 2014)

I'm going with mice, a rat bite would be considerably larger. I'd just chop off the chewed on part on use the soap anyways.


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## Ruthie (Mar 16, 2014)

If you cut off the chewed areas then rebatch any germs would be dead.  But I fully understand the desire to toss them.  Nasty creatures!  

When we first moved into our "new" house, we had a mouse problem, and peppermint oil on cotton balls drove them out.  But of course one must refresh that when the smell lessens.  Otherwise they will return.


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## Susie (Mar 16, 2014)

Peanut butter is our chosen bait of choice for traps.  They can't pick it up and run off with it.  They must get in there and try to bite or lick.


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## paillo (Mar 16, 2014)

Back when I was hoarding my favorite bars from other people (before I started making my own), I found mouse bite marks in the water heater utility closet where I kept them. We caught the bad little critter in a mouse-sized Hav-A-Hart trap and set him free in a nearby field. Identical bite marks.


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## AnnaMarie (Mar 16, 2014)

So sorry! That just stinks. I'd be fuming myself....Cut your losses and throw the soap away for safety's sake. I would be leery of even touching it with an unaccounted for rat getting into soap. 

Cheers!
Anna Marie
Ps- hope you catch the blasted sucker


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## Donna (Mar 16, 2014)

I also use the Hav-A-Hart trap.  We live in the forest.  I take mice quite a ways away and release them on the property of a nasty old man who is constantly 
causing problems   I've found that peppermint or spearmint on cotton balls works quite well in our garage, and the garage smells wonderful!


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## AustinStraight (Mar 16, 2014)

:sad: That's unfortunate... and as Silverwolf mentioned, it's interesting how they didn't bite the peppermint soap - peppermint is used to repel rodents.  I'd definitely throw the soaps out, especially if you plan on selling them.  I've used peppermint to repel ants and it works amazingly, you can actually draw a circle of peppermint around an ant and they treat it like some kind of minty force-field.


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## Ellacho (Mar 16, 2014)

Oh no.... I knew and heard about mice and rats eating soaps. Yes, those do look like rats teeth marks. If those were my soaps, I would just toss them(contaminated) away. But I hope you'd find a way to save them somehow. Sorry about your soaps .


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

@AnneMarie, paillo, Susie, I'm setting up the mouse trap tonight, with the honey soap as bait. If they want the soap, they can have it. Let's see if I can get them. 

@AustinStraight - I'm making soap for personal use . Peppermint force-shield sounds great too. I use eucalyptus oil once to get rid of an ant nest in my room,they work wonderful.

@Donna & Ruthie - I move my other soaps to a shoes box temporarily until I can figure out where to cure them safely. I don't have any type of minty oil right now, but I do have tree tea oil. Will put that in the shoes box, it should keep those pest out for the time being. 

Thanks for the support and ideas guys. I guess I can use this as an excuse to make new batches of soap .


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## btz (Mar 16, 2014)

BTW, does anyone know if lavender oil can also be used to repels rats? I read  that it can do that, but the rat ate one of my soaps with lavender eo in  it. Although, to be fair, I didn't put much in and the smell was almost  very faint now.


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## Kansas Farm Girl (Mar 16, 2014)

I did not know that rats or mice would eat soap, but I know some dogs who will if they get a chance. Guess they all look at it as a food source. I can't imagine soap tasting good to any creature. Since I am frugal by nature (aka Cheapsake) I would cut off the bitten areas, shave the outer edges and rebatch. Like I said, I am cheap.


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## Jeanea (Mar 16, 2014)

If the soap is curing, the lye won't effect them....huh...I had friend who would leave Coca-Cola out for mice and rats. She said they can't pass gas so it kills them after they digest it


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## grayceworks (Mar 16, 2014)

I would honestly just cut the bitten areas off and keep it for personal use. I mean, what do you wash with after touching yucky stuff? Soap!


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## btz (Mar 17, 2014)

@Kansas Farm Girl - The rice bran with manuka honey actually has this food smell, something like cooked bean (?). I can't explained it very clearly, the smell is very subtle though. I had this conversation on another thread before the rat gets to my soap. 



SageontheMountain said:


> btz, my husband is Russian and reads a  lot of anecdotes. He told me one about a tourist who goes to a nearby  store where a couple different kinds of soaps are being sold. He asks  the cashier which is the better soap. And she says "the local  soap...because the mice will eat it." Basically, saying that the local  soap is made with good ingredients, but the mice won't eat the other  soap because it's full of chemicals.
> 
> All that to say, I think that any critter is going to be attracted to  our soaps because of the natural ingredients that are "edible" even  though they should not be eaten.



@Jeanea - the soap has been zap-free since week 2 though. I'm guessing that the rat had just find a way to my curing place. I don't mind killing rats using trap, but I'm afraid if I did what you said, they will die somewhere I couldn't reach and will stink up the house. 

@grayceworks - I use one bar as rat baits, and give the others away. I told them what happened to the soap, and they don't mind it so they asked for it. I already cut out the bitten part and peel out the outer layer, and told them to soak them in alcohol and dried it under the sun before using it as extra measure. 

Didn't managed to get rat last night, but I put the trap inside the house and make sure that all the doors and windows were closed. Gonna put it in the garage tonight, hopefully I can catch those little critters.


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## Sagebrush (Mar 17, 2014)

I was thinking about that anecdote as I was creeping on this thread


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## btz (Mar 17, 2014)

SageontheMountain said:


> I was thinking about that anecdote as I was creeping on this thread



It was like premonition . I immediately thinking about that too when I first saw the bite mark.


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## Sagebrush (Mar 17, 2014)

btz said:


> It was like premonition . I immediately thinking about that too when I first saw the bite mark.




Ha ha...crazy!


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