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Rats! Rats! Rats!

Helpfully held directly up to the camera for maximum forced perspective.
 
Desperate New York City authorities to sterilize rats
http://rt.com/usa/new-york-rat-sterilization-340/

Gotham authorities are testing a new weapon against the city’s famously tenacious rats – a poison that brings on menopause in females. Now, researchers must decide what morsel to combine the chemical with in order to tempt the animals to eat it.

"Our product is not designed to eradicate any species. That's a human error that needs to not be repeated,” said Dr. Loretta Mayer, co-founder of SenesTech, the company that developed the chemical compound.

"It's a very natural thing. We're just accelerating it in these animals."

Female rats can produce up to 12 pups a litter, and will give birth as many as five times during their life cycles. The sterilization compound, dubbed ContraPest, targets the ovarian follicles and renders the pests sterile within five to ten days of ingestion.

Thomas Lamb, chief of innovation and technology for New York City Transit, says the new approach is a result of the futility of the current methods used to combat the city’s estimated population of several hundred thousand rodents.

"We basically bait, trap and kill. If we just continue to do that, every year we'll have the same expense and the same result," he said.

Under the current methods, the city has to poison more rats than are born, but even if it succeeds in doing so, the problem is rarely solved. The surviving rats are then left with a food surplus, and produce large litters that quickly rebuild the population.

And in the unlikely scenario that all the rats would be killed, other animals from neighboring regions would quickly swoop in.

The point of the plan currently in place is to create a constant, but smaller population of older and quieter rats through lower birth rates.

Now, the problem is to get the animals to eat the poison.

The rodents have highly developed taste, and can detect as little of two parts per million of poison in their food.

"Rats in Laos, they like coconut. But the rats in Indonesia prefer fish flavor," said Mayer, whose product has already been used in rural areas around the world. "You have to be very much one with the animal."

SenesTech has been given a grant of over $1 million by the National Institutes of Health to find the perfect bait.

Dr. Robert Corrigan, a prominent rodentologist, told the Wall Street Journal that variations in taste are determined by what the rats usually have in their diets.

"Rats that grow up, say, from the dumpster behind a fast food chicken place, will love chicken. Bagel place, bagels. And so on."

The bait will be flavored with different tastes and smells, potentially as varied as donuts, cookies or ham. Each one will contain a dye that can be detected in rats’ whiskers in a post-mortem, so that scientists can see which flavor they preferred.

"We really won't know what works until we get in there," said Mayer.

She added that if the generic bait is not successful, the poison may have to be placed inside discarded pepperoni slices. But despite such tempting packages for the poison, Mayer stressed that eating the bait would have no consequences for humans.

“Well, it’s quite sweet, quite salty and there’s a lot of fat. Anyone who tried it would probably gain weight from the fat,” she said.
 
Tests to reveal 'super' rat levels in Powys and Gwynedd

Tests are being carried out in Gwynedd and Powys to try and reveal the extent of poison-resistant so-called "super" rats in Wales.
The rats, immune to conventional poisons, are spreading across Britain and have been found in Sussex, Kent and the West Country.
Dr Dougie Clarke, from the University of Huddersfield, is leading the rodenticide resistance mapping project.
He said resistant rats were in Wales, but the extent is unknown.

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, he said: "We've known that there have been resistant rats in Wales dating back to the late 1950s, but full surveys of the extent of it haven't been done recently."
He said genetic testing would be used to determine the presence of super rats in 23 counties in England and two in Wales.
Researchers will investigate the animals' DNA to discover why they are immune and it is hoped the results will be revealed next spring.

Dr Clarke added: "They haven't mutated.
"They've almost [certainly] definitely existed, maybe at a very low level of the rat population.
"They might've been 1%, they might've been 10%."
He said super rats were the "exact same size" and "you can't tell them any differently from normal rats. They've got the same size and everything".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-24839872
 
Get a cat or a terrier.

Sometime I must describe to y'all the Ratapult a mate and I designed for another friend who was a vegan and wanted to be rid of her rats. Late at night. After the pub.
 
One animal friend who will lay waste rats is the ferret!

Fecund and blood thirsty, these weasels will kill rats for sport, and keep killing long after they have no hunger. Most cats can't handle a full grown rat(though some toms are very skilled at the job) Terriers are great rat killers, my Staffordshire has dispatched quite a few-they were bred for the rat pit as well as for dog fighting-but the ferret is the best rat killer of all.

Sadly, they will also kill songbirds and squirrels.
 
Not if you want your polecat to remain free of disease, you wont.

No worthy ferreter will send his wee beasties down a rat hole.
 
This Is What Happens When A Rat Rides The New York City Subway (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | by Chrsitopher Mathias
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/0 ... 12089.html

Posted: 04/08/2014 12:35 pm EDT Updated: 04/08/2014 1:59 pm EDT

A very unwelcome passenger boarded a Brooklyn-bound A train on Monday morning in New York City.

"A usually boring Monday morning commute to work at Brooklyn was stirred up by this little guy," writes Jinais Ponnampadikkal Kader on YouTube, where he posted a video of a large rat scurrying around a subway car, sending his fellow commuters into a frenzy.

"[The rat] joined us at the Fulton street station on the A train going downtown. Someone getting off the train was screaming 'RAT on the train!' But by the time everyone realized what was happening, the doors closed and the train entered the tunnel. We were stuck with him till the other end."

Most of the straphangers in the video can be seen jumping up onto their seats, while others just lift their legs. Almost everybody takes out phones and begins filming the mayhem.

While there's a lot of screaming, there's also a lot of laughter and smiles. And hey, at least the rat didn't crawl over anyone's face.
 
Woman fills rival's house with rats in fight over boyfriend: cops 8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/0 ... 12089.html
DANIEL KELLEY, REUTERS

FIRST POSTED: FRIDAY, APRIL 04, 2014 02:54 PM EDT | UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 04, 2014 02:59 PM EDT

PHILADELPHIA - How do you get the attention of a girl who has everything - including your boyfriend?

One woman seeking revenge on a romantic rival smashed the windows of her South Philadelphia home and dumped a box of live white rats inside, police said.

"I'd have to say this is a first," Officer Christine O'Brien said on Thursday.

In a long-running dispute over a man, the jealous lover and about eight other women friends used a baseball bat to break the glass and toss the rodents inside at about 11 p.m. Wednesday in the Grays Ferry neighborhood, Philadelphia police said.

The gang also punched the 30-year-old victim, inflicting cuts and bruises, and stole her purse containing identification and about $200, police said.

The victim was able to identify at least one of the attackers, who fled in a Chevy Lumina.
 
Woman Claims Rats Ate Her House
The Huffington Post | by Andres Jauregui
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/0 ... 19932.html

Posted: 04/09/2014 2:59 pm EDT Updated: 04/09/2014 3:00 pm EDT Print Article

An Australian woman whose ceiling collapsed on her blames rats, and she says the vermin are eating her house from the inside out.

Ann Barker said that her daughter had to pull her out from beneath the rubble after the bathroom ceiling at her Melbourne home came down on her Tuesday.

She told 3 AW that her new house, which she has only lived in for four months, has suffered serious damage due to an apparent infestation by rats.

“At this stage they’ve chewed through nine pipes, and I’ve got two more leaks,” Barker said. “There were holes under my veranda and holes on the corner of the roof where the guttering is. I’m waiting for someone to check the rest of the roof.”

She says that neither the home builder nor her insurance will help her. And it appears she's not the only person in the area to report problems with rats.

According to News.com.au, a woman who lives in the suburb of Dandenong in southeast Melbourne, called into a radio show to complain that homes in her area have been plagued by rats.
 
Perhaps a bit late, but....

Ferrets terrify rats, they cause them to quiver, collapse and sometimes, spontaniously die. I don't think one ought to use pet ferrets(sweet creatures) for such duty, but there must be plenty of ferals glad for the chance.

And as to the woman who dumped white rats...shame! White rats are quite docile, and will make good pets, the local feral rats will kill them. The white rat is a native of Philadelphia. Some were discovered in an old sewer closed off ion colonial times, taken to the Franklin Institute as curiosities, and from there, they soon bred their way to becoming very popular lab animals. Before that, scientists had to use alley rats, caught in cage traps...Philadelphia is a VERY strange place.
 
I woke up yesterday morning to find a rat in my toilet! I'm talking a bloody big bedraggled thing sitting in the bowl staring up at me. It was a wtf moment... and what to do? I needed to use the bog for it's intended purpose as well.

I tried emptying buckets & buckets of water in an effort to flush it away & thought I'd succeeded, only for a tail to become visible again protruding from the u-bend, and still moving! Eventually I thought I'd got rid of it but the bloody thing reappeared again later. I called the council who gave me the British Pest Control phone no but couldn't find anyone to come & remove it that day, so I bought some thick gardening gloves to give myself the option to fish it out myself. Not a good prospect to say the least....

When I later steeled myself to do the deed, the bowl was empty & the intruder gone. I was mightily relieved but am now paranoid about a reappearance. My toilet is on the 1st floor so the rat had climbed a vertical pipe to get there. I could imagine it more likely if it was on the ground floor but on the 1st?

I'm just thankful it couldn't get out - imagine a large shitty rat escaping & running amok round the house....
 
Terrifying!

Worse than my worse nightmare.

Always keep a Jack Russell Terrier about to keep the rats away.
 
A .625 Cold Steel Blowgun is my anti-rat tool of choice. I use long bamboo skewer darts, and even though I don't always get a clean kill(I have to use a heavy cudgel I call the Mouse Mace to finish the job)I've seriously reduced the population of rodents in our alley.

Now, if some of the neighbors would use a trash can and not a plastic bag, we might see a deep reduction in rodent numbers.

When humans are gone, many scientists predict an Age of Rodents.

SQUEAK!!!!!
 
I used to practice archery in Portsmouth by shooting down into a dead space formed by sheds being put up round it. Climbing out of my window onto a shed roof meant I could get a clean shot.

My neighbours threw food waste into it, hence many rats.

Expensive on arrows as I couldn't bring myself to climb down and retrieve them. But very satisfying. And my field shooting got very much better!

Nobody ever said anything but I was in full view of the back of maybe 25-30 houses. :confused: Maybe I should have dressed up.

Not quite like fish in a barrel but....
 
We used to have two Jack Russells. One of them was an absolutely amazing ratter, and it was quite something to watch him digging for them and tearing lumps of grass roots out with his teeth to get them out of their burrows. He used to kill them very efficiently and quickly, too. His all time best performance was on a smallholding where the remains of a potato clamp had been left to rot under a tarpaulin, and several families of rats had moved in. He had a wonderful time as the tarpaulin was peeled back; I have a picture somewhere of him standing in our hallway afterwards, with his little bandy legs and his face back to the ears black and stinking of decomposed potato...

The other Jack, interestingly enough, doesn't have a clue. He used to watch the pro (no longer with us, sadly) with his tail wagging slowly and his head on one side; you could see him thinking, "What ARE you doing?"
 
monops said:
We used to have two Jack Russells. One of them was an absolutely amazing ratter, and it was quite something to watch him digging for them and tearing lumps of grass roots out with his teeth to get them out of their burrows. He used to kill them very efficiently and quickly, too. His all time best performance was on a smallholding where the remains of a potato clamp had been left to rot under a tarpaulin, and several families of rats had moved in. He had a wonderful time as the tarpaulin was peeled back; I have a picture somewhere of him standing in our hallway afterwards, with his little bandy legs and his face back to the ears black and stinking of decomposed potato...

The other Jack, interestingly enough, doesn't have a clue. He used to watch the pro (no longer with us, sadly) with his tail wagging slowly and his head on one side; you could see him thinking, "What ARE you doing?"

The other one can't be a full blooded JRT!
 
My Welshie does all the actions, including the tearing up the turf with his teeth, but he's never yet caught a rat. There must be some trick to it that he hasn't been let in on :)
 
Cochise, he needs a kind owner with a spade digging into the back of the burrow to help flush them towards him ;)

ramonmercado, it's interesting you say that. Mac, the one in question, was a rescue, so we don't know about his parentage, but he is big for a Jack and has unusual slanted eyes. We wonder if there's some bull terrier in there.
 
monops said:
Cochise, he needs a kind owner with a spade digging into the back of the burrow to help flush them towards him ;)

ramonmercado, it's interesting you say that. Mac, the one in question, was a rescue, so we don't know about his parentage, but he is big for a Jack and has unusual slanted eyes. We wonder if there's some bull terrier in there.

I had a big Jack as well, definitely a mix in there. But he carried on like a 100% Jack. Even put an Irish Wolfhound to flight.
 
ramonmercado said:
monops said:
Cochise, he needs a kind owner with a spade digging into the back of the burrow to help flush them towards him ;)

ramonmercado, it's interesting you say that. Mac, the one in question, was a rescue, so we don't know about his parentage, but he is big for a Jack and has unusual slanted eyes. We wonder if there's some bull terrier in there.

I had a big Jack as well, definitely a mix in there. But he carried on like a 100% Jack. Even put an Irish Wolfhound to flight.

:D Sounds about right! One of my childhood memories is of the little Jack I grew up with putting a whole herd of deer to flight and chasing them down one of the main drives at Knole Park...
 
Sounds like they need some JRTs in Paris:

France Paris: Louvre rat run shocks the French
By Hugh Schofield, BBC News, Paris

[Video: Rats have been drawn to the Louvre gardens by picnickers' food]

The Louvre in Paris has called in the pest controllers after picnickers in the museum gardens encouraged an infestation of rats.
Startling photos and videos posted online in recent days show rats scavenging for food, singly or in groups, yards from snacking tourists.

The Louvre gardens are popular as a resting-place for the gallery's tens of thousands of daily visitors.
Parisians also use the gardens as a lunching spot.

But at the height of summer, museum authorities are having difficulties keeping the gardens - which consist of lawns intercut by lines of thick hedge and studded with early 19th Century statuary - clean.

Rubbish and scraps of discarded food accumulate beneath the hedges, whose interiors are occasionally used as a toilet. Crows peck among the detritus next to overflowing bins.

The rat alert was raised by photographer Xavier Francolon, who was taking pictures of the nearby Tuileries funfair when he got sidetracked by the more interesting story unfolding beneath his feet.

"It's quite common to see rats in Paris at night," he told Le Point magazine. "But what was weird was seeing them in broad daylight. They were going right up close to the people picnicking." In two days he saw more than 30 of the pests.

"A Dutchman with his family asked me what those animals were. The family must have been to Disneyland because when I told him, his children started shouting: 'Look, it's Ratatouille!'"

The Eurodisney theme park outside Paris has just opened a new attraction based on the exploits of the culinary rat. According to a pest expert quoted in Le Parisien newspaper, there is now a "Ratatouille effect" which renders children almost friendly towards rats.
"In the Louvre gardens you even see people feeding the rats, which is the very last thing they should be doing," he said.

Mild winter

The Louvre museum says it is aware of the problem, and has a regular programme of rat clearance in the gardens. Following the latest sightings, pest controllers have been in again and for now the rats seem to have disappeared.

Various reasons have been put forward for this year's proliferation at the Louvre. The mild winter will have encouraged reproduction (and with five litters a year of between five and 12 pups, rats breed fast).

The vast urban reconstruction project at Les Halles, which is nearby, may have displaced many of the animals. And recent rainstorms caused water to accumulate in sewers, bringing rats to the surface.
But above all it is the lack of cleanliness at the Louvre gardens which is at fault.

According to Frederic Devanlay of the pest-control company Avipur: "There has been a steady increase in the number of rats in Paris going back eight years. They get used to human presence and as time goes by they come closer and closer to contact with people."

According to an unofficial figure quoted in all the French press, it is reckoned there are now six million rodents in Paris - 2.5 per human inhabitant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28565107
 
Monops - "Fenton, Fenton...oh Jesus Christ". if you haven't seen the clip look on you tube. :)
 
Estimates on rat numbers are silly.

Does somebody count them? No, it's a guess.

And it'll vary according to the interests involved.
 
krakenten said:
Estimates on rat numbers are silly.

Does somebody count them? No, it's a guess.

And it'll vary according to the interests involved.

How about employing Jack Russell Terriers' to do a census?
 
They's get hiccups :)
 
Spudrick68 said:
Monops - "Fenton, Fenton...oh Jesus Christ". if you haven't seen the clip look on you tube. :)

:D I have indeed seen that clip! It was very much like that, except the dog's legs were shorter and moving faster!
 
A new study has found that New York City’s rats are hosts to at least 18 new viruses, never before encountered and unknown to science. There is a risk of a “a public health nightmare.”

The research was conducted by a team from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, who analyzed viruses in Manhattan rats.

“Everybody’s looking all over the world, in all sorts of exotic places, including us. But nobody’s looking right under our noses,” Ian Lipkin, a professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia, told the New York Times.

The initial report was published in mBio magazine on Tuesday and focused on 133 rats scientists had analyzed that had demonstrated a variety of pathogens. Some of them transmit food-borne diseases, and some, like Seoul Hantavirus, have never been seen in New York before. Finally, there are at least 18 completely new pathogens to science.

Two pathogens are similar to one that causes Hepatitis C and could help the researchers fight the disease. ...

http://rt.com/usa/197268-rat-ny-viruses-pathogens/
 
More pests were dealt with in Wales per person than in any other country in the UK last year, according to the British Pest Control Association (BPCA). Welsh local authorities treated pests nearly 50,000 times - rats alone caused 27,198 problems.

One of the more unusual problems was an infestation of tarantula-type spiders in a child's bedroom in Aberdare.

Wales had three times more call-outs for rats than Scotland and 11 times more than Northern Ireland.

The Chartered Institute for Environmental Health (CIEH) says the figures, obtained from a freedom of information request to all UK local authorities, are "significant".

Julie Barratt from CIEH said: "2013 was an exceptional year weather-wise and in bad weather the rats will look for somewhere to go. There are not more rats, they are just more visible. "Rats have always caused problems for public health. The best thing people can do is make sure their homes are resistant. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-30131295
 
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