Plug those little holes in your soffits, trim the branches away from your roof, clean up around your bird feeders and fruit trees and, for the sake of a good night’s sleep, keep your doors and windows closed.
Rat heaven is a place out of the weather to eat and breed.
Every year, thousands of homes in Greater Victoria invite them in through tiny holes in roofs and walls, an open door while you unload your groceries and — in some cases, jeesh! — up through the sewer line and into your toilet.
“It’s happened,” said Mike Kennish, owner of PSI: Pest Scene Investigations, in Victoria.
“Plumbers are putting doors on sewer lines now that when effluent flows out a door snaps shut … you don’t want a rat in your toilet.”
Greater Victoria has always had a rat problem, but this year it seems especially bad, according to pest-control experts.
“I’ve been doing this for 32 years and the [rat] population is growing along with human population,” said Kennish. “We provide everything they want — food, shelter and a mild climate.”
An extended warm summer and fall has afforded rats and mice multiple breeding cycles that have pushed their populations higher.
A female rat can produce six to eight litters and up to 64 offspring a year, according to experts, especially when they have food, shelter and good weather. The most common are Norway and roof rats.
There are 18 companies providing rat control services in Greater Victoria and all of them are really busy right now.
There are companies not taking any new clients because of the sheer volume of calls and some are booking two weeks in advance.
“People don’t want to wait two weeks when there’s a rat in their kitchen,” said Kennish.
A day’s work for Karl Swinscoe of Pestbusters is nine dead rats in a bag, including “one I’d say is the size of a small cat.”
“People left a bag of garbage on the back porch and this garbage bag just got bigger and bigger [with trash] … what do you think is going to happen?”
Swinscoe said rats are highly adaptable. During the pandemic shutdowns of restaurants, they followed the food trail out of the core and into the suburbs, where they found ample food from bird feeders, compost, gardens and trash.
“I kill them for a living but I do respect them because they adapt to us so well,” said Swinscoe.
A typical rat needs about 30 to 60 grams of food a day to survive, and up to 70 to 80 if it’s a nursing female. A family of 10 rats would need at least 450 grams.
Colonies of rats with multiple families accumulate because of a steady food source such as a dumpster or access to a sewer system. They can build up around urban chicken coops and bird feeders where there are continuing supplies of food.
James Sutherland of Old Island Pest Control said the increasing number of rats is likely due to more composting, backyard gardens and chicken coops — all of which blossomed during the pandemic.
The best defence is denying rodents a food and a water source, said Kennish, and that means eliminating those sources and hopefully having your neighbours on board because rats will travel up to 300 feet from their nesting sites for food and water.
Fernwood resdient John Threlfall said he traps two or three rats a week.
He eradicated rats from his home several years ago, but during the pandemic got a backyard chicken coop and the rats are back in droves, attracted to the warmth of the coop and the chicken feed.
“It’s all year,” he said.
“I wear a size 10 shoe and yesterday the rat I saw was bigger than my shoe size … so big, so well fed,” he said. Another rat he trapped was “as long as [the distance] from the tip of my finger to my elbow.”
But Threlfall is determined to keep his two chickens, and that means a daily system of killing the rodents with spring traps. “I’ve got a real rat trap system now where I keep them scrubbed and oiled,” he said.
But rats are smart. “Some are masterminds” of getting the bait without setting off the neck-breaking traps.
“Some of them actually drag twigs onto the traps to set it off,” Threlfall said.
Use of traps and rodenticides can have unintended consequences. Spring traps using the preferred bait of peanut butter can attract birds and pets while poisons have been blamed for killing owls and other raptors who prey on rats with poisons in their systems.
The province initiated an 18-month ban on the sale and use of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs), and will make the ban permanent on Jan. 21.
The province spent the past 16 months reviewing SGARs and the impact of the highly lethal poisons, including the secondary poisonings of birds.
Rodenticides — which initiate internal bleeding causing death — have been around for decades, but new, more potent poisons have been developed as rats developed immunity.
Pest control professionals say first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides require multiple feedings and are not as effective, so trapping one rat at a time is about the only way for a homeowner to attack a rat problem. And that can be time-consuming and less effective, they say.
The permanent ban will apply to all sales and use of second-generation rodenticides by the public, and most commercial and industrial operations in the province, except for those considered “essential services.” Those exempt include hospitals and care homes, farmers, restaurants and grocery stores and others in food production, port, road and air operations, garbage collectors, and cemeteries, among others.
Essential services using SGARs must hire a licensed pest-control company, apply for licensing, prepare a pest-management plan and record poison use.
Deanna Pfeifer of Owl Watch in Victoria said the government’s ban on SGARs is “disappointing” because of the exemptions. A study in 2009 on 164 owls in Western Canada found that 70% of the birds had residues of at least one rodenticide and nearly half had multiple rodenticides.
Pfeifer said the ban covers only three of the 27 toxic chemicals in SGARs and poisoned rats will continue to be a threat to raptors because of the long list of exempted users. “It’s a tiny step … it’s some action, but it’s not even enforceable when there’s only four pest officers for the entire province.”
SO WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DEAD RAT?
Dead rodents can carry disease and attract wildlife and must be disposed of properly, according to the province.
It recommends that you wear gloves when handling dead rodents and you can either bury it or seal the rodent in a plastic bag if you’re throwing it in the garbage.
For multiple dead rats brought to the Hartland Landfill, the Capital Regional District said the rats would be considered controlled waste, which requires a special permit. Controlled wastes, which include dead animals and large quantities of animal fecal matter, are disposed of in designated trenches at Hartland and covered daily to minimize nuisance, odours, scavenging by birds and leachate impacts.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
