How a bag of dead rats proved this bug-killing gizmo really works

Let’s set the scene. It all started in 2021, when we set out to update our guide for the best bug-killing gear. We wanted to manage bugs that swarm inside and around stinky outdoor trash bins, and we had heard about Terro’s Garbage Guard, a little gadget that sticks to the underside of a trash lid. It fills up your barrel with a cloud of insecticide, killing any crawlies that might be hanging around.

Michael Murtaugh

Our original testing plan was to set up two trash barrels, each containing a small piece of raw chicken. After the flies came, we were going to attach a Terro to one barrel, close them both, and check in a week later to see if the gadget effectively killed the flies.

But then the maggot-coated bag of dead rats showed up, providing us with a better, more thorough test than we could ever have simulated.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Doug has a chicken coop, and the rats are unwelcome visitors—they show up in droves, eat the grain, and leave droppings everywhere. He needed a way to get rid of them, and when regular traps proved insufficient, Doug set up three bait stations with rat poison.

“Five days later, I started finding dead rats. Lots of them—between seven and eight each day. I needed to store the dead rats for a bit, so I put about 15 of them in a feed bag, put that bag in a heavy-duty plastic contractor bag, and tucked it all behind my chicken coop (on the sunny side of the structure). The flow of dead rats stopped and, to be honest, I forgot about the bag.”

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That’s right, reader. He forgot about the bag of rotting rats. Three days had passed.

We can’t overstate how upsetting this thing was. Doug still remembers it vividly: “I raise sheep, cows, pigs, and chickens, so I may be a little more tolerant to this sort of thing than most, but even with that, this was really something. The smell alone was just outrageous. The whole thing was just so nasty.”

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Like a true (and noble) Wirecutter expert, Doug had a little cartoon light bulb appear over his head.

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“As gross as it was, as bad as it smelled, and as little as I wanted to go near it, I thought: ‘If the Garbage Guard can handle this … it can handle anything.’ Minutes later, I was holding the bag above an empty trash barrel, with my shirt collar up over my nose, and I dropped it in, maggots and all,” he said.

Michael Murtaugh

He checked in on the Terro-equipped garbage bin three days later.

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The thing had wiped out nearly all of the bugs. The maggot graveyard at the bottom of the barrel looked more like someone had dumped a few cups of rice in there. What was once a heap of crawlies had been reduced to one or two resilient squirmers.

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Suffice it to say: The Garbage Guard worked.

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“I certainly wouldn’t have set out to do that specific test, but the opportunity was there, so I went for it. It ended up being a great test because it really showed what the Garbage Guard is capable of, which is what we were after.”

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In the year since Rat-Gate, Doug luckily hasn’t had to put the Terro up against anything nearly as vomitous. But the whole experience has made him a convert. He’s since purchased two new Garbage Guards, and they’ve kept his bins pest-free for the entire summer. (To get the most of your Terro, we’ve got some tips for long-term maintenance and safety in our guide.)

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Doug has been testing gear since 2007. In that time, he has dropped tape measures off a garage roof and installed and used 13 bidets in his house. He even spent a day string-trimming over 12,500 square feet of a field. “But what happened with the Garbage Guard was really the most unusual thing I’ve ever done,” he admitted.

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Enjoy your pest-free bins. And don’t say we never did anything for you.