Tuesday, August 17, 1999
Rats in all the wrong places - maybe yours
BY MIKE PULFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Theresa Martin and her five-year-old dog Peanut chased a rat through her home, only to end up calling for professional help from an exterminator.
(Jeff Swinger photos)
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Rats.
Just when you thought all the bad news about hot weather had dried up, somebody drags this out of the sewers:
Our rodent neighbors are getting thirsty and hungry this summer and looking for food in all the wrong places — perhaps yours.
Even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, a rodent movement that's been building for as long as 10 years could be headed in your direction.
Chances are, you want to head it off. Rats, according to a recent survey by a pesticide manufacturer, represent the third biggest fear in America, right behind public speaking and going to the dentist.
While she saves her squealing for something scarier, Theresa Martin says the rat she saw recently in her Fort Wright basement must go. “I don't like killing things,” she said. “But he's a rat. He's in my house. He's going to have to die.”
Thanks to extreme summer weather and construction projects, rats are on the move, says Tom Hooper, a sanitarian with the Cincinnati Board of Health. “They're always looking for food, but now we're seeing some more rats above ground, searching for water.
“Food supplies can dry up a little, too,” he said, without adequate moisture.
While nobody sees a rodent invasion in the Tristate, there are indications rat activity is on the rise. Exterminators are getting more calls, and a resident of one of Hyde Park's fashionable streets has been complaining to her neighborhood council about rats around her house.
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PERCEPTIONS ABOUT RATS
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Rats are notorious for spreading fleas, says Michael Bohdan, Texas zoologist and author of What's Buggin' You? — Guide to Home Pest Control (Santa Monica Press; $12.95). They have been linked to trichinosis, salmonella, hantavirus and rat-bite fever, none of which is normally fatal.
“The biggest fear ... is bites and rabies,” Mr. Bohdan said. “People perceive rats as being rabid, although the chance of getting rabies is greater with skunks and raccoons.”
Another perception about rats: They're big and they're ugly. Hardly anybody disagrees.
• Typically, they weigh as much as a pound and a half and stretch to 18 inches long (including the tail).
• In spite of their physique, they can leap 3 feet in the air and jump from 50 feet up without injury.
• They can swim half a mile and tread water for three days.
• They can chew their way through 2-by-4s.
• Although they can't see well, they have keen senses of hearing and smell.
• Average life span is only a year, but females can have eight to 12 babies every three weeks.
— Mike Pulfer
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Rats aren't going to the suburbs because of the schools or the fresh air. They're scared there by construction work in the city and lured there by the feasts passing through the garbage.
“They can be found in the most mundane to the most expensive houses,” said Michael Bohdan, a zoologist and author of What's Buggin' You? — Guide to Home Pest Control. “I had a woman with a $2.5 million house just call me to complain about a couple of rats under her bird feeder.”
Bery Pannkuk, technical director at Scherzinger, a Pleasant Ridge pest control company, says rat flight to the suburbs and upscale city neighborhoods has been going on throughout the '90s. “They've been moving out on a fairly consistent basis.”
The reason? Primarily, the renovation of older houses in older neighborhoods with older sewers.
“One of the first things people do when they move in is remodel the kitchen, and one of the first things (they add) in the kitchen is a garbage disposal,” he said. “Suddenly, you're serving shrimp and lobster tails and filet mignon and the rat populations are moving from what you would consider their normal place of business: downtown and inner-city neighborhoods.”
Mr. Hooper and Mr. Pannkuk point to major construction projects — many of them downtown — to explain disruptions in rat habits and habitats. Got rats? Eviction notices won't work. And glue boards — a recent development in anti-rat retailing, have gotten lukewarm reviews from the professionals.
Developed as shallow trays of stickiness, they can stop a rodent in its tracks, but too many rats elect to “chew off a leg and disappear, leaving nothing but a trail of blood,” Mr. Pannkuk said.
“I once put a giant glue board out and all I caught was a 7-inch tail,” Mr. Bohdan said. “Somewhere in Dallas, there's a very large rat with a stump for a tail. And I have an inkling he's pretty mad, too.”
A new pest repellent, the $50 PestContro from Lentek International in Orlando, promises to keep rats out of the house by producing variable ultrasonic sounds that cover 2,500 square feet.
The alternatives? Snap traps, live-catch traps, poisons and professional exterminators.
If you set “snap” traps, be careful. “You've got to have something strong, and some of them can break your hand,” Mr. Pannkuk says.
If you use poisons, think about children and pets and the possibility of a dead rat in a floor or wall of your house. “A 1-pound rat can get really, really stinky,” he said.
If you catch one in a live-catch trap, you'll have to dispose of it, Mr. Hooper said. “If you feel strongly about it, you can have it euthanized” — for a fee. Call a veterinarian or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Ms. Martin, whose “terrier-mutt” Peanut discovered a rat behind some boxes and chased it across the floor, decided to hire professionals.
“She (the dog) can't catch anything,” Ms. Martin said.
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