Pied Piper wanted for Swift Current, SK

[PMedMoe]

Rats infest Saskatchewan city
Article Link

SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. - After killing 38 rats with poison and traps since June, motel owner Ike Reimer is fed up and taking no chances.

He now patrols the area near his Safari Inn armed with a can of bear spray in case he comes face-to-face with any more of the rodents that have been invading the southwestern Saskatchewan community.

Reimer and other people want the City of Swift Current to hire more professional rat catchers and come up with government-run and financed plan to keep the varmints in check.

"We are finding them dead here and there," Reimer said Thursday.

"We are all trying to do a little bit, but it is not enough. No one is sure where they are coming from."

The city's uncharacteristic rat problem has prompted the Cypress Health Region to issue a special rat advisory.

People are being warned that the Norway rats pose a health hazard and can spread bacteria, viruses and parasites that can cause infections such as salmonella and rat-bite fever. Hanta virus is also a concern.

"The Cypress Health Region Health Department has received several calls regarding rats that are infesting the City of Swift Current," says the advisory.

"The calls range from rat sightings to bites in people's own beds."

Residents have also been warned that rats love to gnaw electrical cables in vehicles and buildings and can contaminate food.

The city has been aware of the growing problem since June, but has been taking a low-key approach. It posted a message on its website urging residents to report rat sitings and emphasized that controlling rats is not the municipal government's specific responsibility.

More on link

Anyone up for the job?  I can't imagine why there would be such a large infestation unless there is a food shortage.

 

[Larkvall]

This story reminds me of the mouse plagues that hit Australia. (although it seems much, much worse there.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkTBPk1kunA

 

[SARgirl]

I was trying to do a search to find out which provinces had rats and to what degree, I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find this, which I thought was interesting.

Canada Province Rat-Free for 50 Years
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
March 31, 2003
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0331_030331_rats.html

In the Canadian province of Alberta, a 50-year battle has succeeded in keeping the province rat free.

Maybe the Saskatchewan provincial government should contact the Alberta provincial government to see what it is that Alberta is doing which is keeping them free of rats.

Or...

Maybe Saskatchewan should try to plant some rat eating plants and see if the plants can thrive on Sask. new found rat population:

Rat-eating plant discovered in Philippines
Caption under photo on link:

Rat-eating plant: The team of botanists, led by British experts Stewart McPherson and Alastair Robinson, found the plant on Mount Victoria in the Philippines.  Photo: STEWART MCPHERSON 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6041241/Rat-eating-plant-discovered-in-Philippines.html
Granted, the rat eating plant would likely upset the natural order, but then I'm guessing a new population of rats would do the same. 


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A relative of mine was into scary movies and I remembered a movie about rats from back in the 1980's... I recall being told something about a giant rat in a hallway before or after it had attacked or eaten (not sure which) a baby in a crib, I forget the details. 

I also recall this movie getting quite a lot of attention and there was all kinds of programs and articles which followed about the world's biggest rats found, rat behaviour and what dangers they pose to the human population etc... . 

In any case, recalling this information inspired a search and this is what I found:

Rats (1982) - Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khywOKn-j6k
There was also a movie called "Deadly Eyes" which was a movie about rats based on a novel series.  I'm not sure if either, 'Rats' or 'Deadly Eyes', has the movie scene mentioned above. 

Monster rat found in 'lost world' jungle
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/monster-rat-found-in-lost-world-jungle/2007/12/17/1197740165020.html
Caption under photo:

A 1.4 kg giant rat - probably a species new to science - found in the "lost world" of Foja in western New Guinea.

Giant rat species found in Papua forest
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3319010/Giant-rat-species-found-in-Papua-forest.html

The huge rat - about five times as large as a sewer rat - had no fear of people and regularly wandered into a camp set up by scientists in the remote region of Papua, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea.

 

[SARgirl]

This story reminds me of the mouse plagues that hit Australia.

When I was a girl, for a time, I use to live in a trailer out on a section of land.  The area was mostly settled by farmer's and their families.  After some time, there was a substantial increase in the mouse population. 

During the increase, the traps would catch a minimum of 17 mice in any given day and the only reason we didn't catch more was because my mom was home by herself all day and she refused to empty the traps (can't say as I blame her). 

At night we would feel the mice crawling all over us, in the walls, in the drawers, in the ceiling, you name it, they were every where. 

One day my step dad needed to tend to something under the trailer; the trailer had been raised, with steps to go up and wrap around deck.  Underneath the trailer there was the furnace, water tank, extra insulation etc... .  He pulled away a section of the nicely painted and nicely trimmed boards which went around the bottom of the trailer; spilling out was thousands of mice, you could hear them squealing, he started screaming for my mom to come out; she flung open the back door and me and my mom looked on with him being "knee deep" (literally, there was that many) in mice scrambling and spilling out.  Even our dog jumped unto the top of her dog house and sitting up their like snoopy the look on her face was priceless.  After a short bit the mice were about ankle deep (just the initial spill out = a knee deep amount for the first several mintues).  My step dad asked my mom to come an help him, I won't say what she said, but the bottom line was her going out among all those mice was not going to happen.  My mom closed the door leaving her husband out there to tend to the problem. 

Everyone seemed to think that, the reason why there was so many mice was because under the trailer it was warm and then add an endless food supply all around in every direction, plus a couple years of good local crops and voila. 

It was a difficult problem.  You couldn't burn them out, our house was on top of all those mice.  It was decided that poison would be used; that much poison posed a risk to our family and local animal populations, but the mice couldn't be left to continue growing their population.  Over the course of about a week or so, the population was killed and the remains were burned.

I'll never forget how I could clean droppings out of a drawer, walk out of the room, then walk back, be gone just a few minutes and when I came back it looked like we didn't clean up the droppings.

I also remember the nightly problem of our dog catching the mice and then playing with them up on my moms bed.  Waking up in the morning to my mom screaming over the mice which were neatly laid by the dog across the bed was a regular occurrence. :  After the dog would catch a mouse, she would play with it for a while on the bed, then lay it down on the bed, go catch another one, play with the next one on the bed, lay it on the bed, rinse repeat.  No wonder the dog slept all day; she had quite the busy night on a nightly bases.  The dog was always so proud of her catch.  When my mom would start to wake up, she would sit up so proud and look up with a big doggie smile as to say, "look what I did".  The dog always looked absolutely crushed when hard work, which she was so proud of, was met by my moms screams.  Poor dog!

The increase in mice population was restricted to our land; there was an overall increase for quite the distance all around.  This lead to an increase in local cat population, which lead to a decrease various local populations of other animals, which lead to etc... .

For me, the worst was having the mice crawl all over me at night while I slept; there are some creepy stories to tell from the mice crawling over us at night... another time perhaps. 

Since the above mentioned experience with mice, I have experienced one other mouse problem which occurred not that long ago, about a handful of years ago or so, give or take, but I'll save this first hand story for another time.

Mice - yuck!  Rats - yuck! 

Okay- time to go back to suppressing my experiences with mice. 

 

[mariomike]

They say rats are afraid of humans. But, I've run into some with very bad attitudes. They certainly have no respect for the dead, or even the near dead.

 

[1feral1]

This story reminds me of the mouse plagues that hit Australia. (although it seems much, much worse there.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkTBPk1kunA

In some places here, the mouse plagues are an annual event. One can be knee deep in mice, adn recently in the Outback, mice invaded a hospital, even biting patients in their beds.

As for rats, I remember seeing one huge muther in Sydney, waddling up an alley, down at The Rocks near Circular Quay one night on one of many pub crawls. I also remember one we named Rex in Baghdad, he was huge and would often sit on a nearby shelf in my room, cleaning himself like an impatient hamster, and as soon as one flinched, he'd do the 'Remo Williams' getaway.

OWDU

 

[stryte]

When Swift Current last had their controlled burn at the dump they incorrectly burned from one side to the other instead of a circle inward. This caused all the rats to flee from the dump rather than being destroyed by the fire. Other factors contributed as well including the late spring run-off. So with no dump food or field food rats went into town.