RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

The Canadian province of Alberta, which has long treasured its status as one of the world's few regions free of rats, said on Thursday it is working to rid itself of an infestation of the vermin discovered in a landfill.

Sixty Norway rats have been killed so far in a garbage dump outside Medicine Hat, a city of 61,000 in Alberta's southeastern corner, and officials are taking steps to eradicate the rest of the colony.

"We've got them isolated in a specific area within the dump and we have the dump also contained," said Vaughn Christensen, the provincial official who runs the province's rat control program. "And then ... for a number of miles surrounding the dump we have an active baiting program."

Alberta has billed itself as being rat free for more than seven decades after moving in 1950 to wipe out the rodents which eat agricultural crops and spread disease. The province maintains a 29-kilometer (18-mile) buffer zone along its eastern border with Saskatchewan where bait traps are monitored in order to watch for any rat populations headed west.

The Medicine Hat colony was spotted after rats began turning up in traps in the spring and through public reports.

While some infestations are occasionally spotted and dealt with, Christensen said it is rare to find a colony the size of the one in Medicine Hat's landfill.

"It's hard to put a number to the size," he said. "But if we recover 60 rats above ground then it's logical to assume, because they (live) primarily underground, there's more there. ... But I think we're talking hundreds, not thousands, and not the hundreds of thousands you might find in other parts of the world."

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

What happens when you combine the actions of two hungry rodent species?

Gray Squirrels were feasting by day and Norway Rats after dark!

This client did not have the room in the rear alley for a metal dumpster, so our first recommendation was to have the on site superintendent purchase new, sturdy plastic containers with wheels and place them outside on trash day morning. Whallah! It stopped the excessive exterior rodent activity! The tenants were pleased, the pests were not. Most of the time, the simple suggestion is the best suggestion. Contact us for more no-nonsense approaches to pest management.

Post Office Overrun by RATS as Rodents Devour Parcels........
So if You Don't Get Any Presents This Year Now You Know Why

With 16.5 billion letters, packages and cards expected through the U.S. Postal Service this holiday season, the last obstacle senders might expect their packages to face, are thieving rats.

A post office in Manhattan is fighting a rat infestation leaving chewed boxes and envelopes that carries any item found edible, by both human and rodent taste.

Packages found deliverable despite their outside damage of visible gnawing and gaping holes are showing up in the hands of their recipients as mere shells. The little animals can smell the chocolate and goodies,' Maureen Marion, a USPS spokeswoman for the North East told the New York Times, whose office has found the most reported damaged packages.

At Midtown they’ve been very good at putting things in cabinets to keep them away from nibbles, but this time of year they just have more packages than they do have space to accommodate them,' Ms Marion said.

One New York Times employee expecting a treat from The Vermont Brownie Company says they opened a gnawed box to find only a card inside.

Our brownies are individually wrapped so they stay fresh,' the company's note read to the recipient.

Other more sturdy boxes, in one example holding a gift of international chocolates, arrived to their office building more lucky they report with mere teeth marks around the packaging.

It's a surprise since the kind of rats that infest New York City called the Norway rat, are capable of chewing through glass, cinder block, wire, aluminum and lead, according to the National Pest Management Association.

Without the total number of known packages destroyed at other post office branches around the city, with a report by the Gothamist suggesting a second office in the city, a worker at the midtown office signaled to a Times' reporter:

They do have a problem with rats here,' a worker at the office confessed to their reporter.

I've seen one, downstairs on the work floor. It was big, they said.

In size, the average subway rat in Manhattan is 16 inches long, with its thick, tapering tail accounting for about half of that length, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On Monday the post office changed its usual visitation by an exterminator from every two weeks to once a week.

Ms Marion says that for items damaged in handling,' unless they were insured, there is no ability for compensation, 'regardless of the nature of the damage

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA