RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

Boston Cop Mailed Dead Rats as Payback in Sex Ring

A Boston transit police officer has been suspended after he was caught mailing dead rats.

Why was he mailing dead rats?

According to CBS Boston, the officer was sending a message to a man who failed to pay the cop's girlfriend or another prostitute for sex.

Not your run-of-the-mill dead rats in the mail story.

MBTA Police Officer Greg Thorpe was caught mailing dead rats to a Hyde Park man, from a UPS store in South Boston about ten days ago. Sources tell the CBS Boston that Thorpe was caught on video by security cameras in a UPS customer service center, mailing two packages. At one point he reportedly looks at the security camera and smiles.

Sources say officer Thorpe's girlfriend offered her "services" on Craigslist and that the uniformed officer would drive her and her friends to appointments in his marked MBTA cruiser during his midnight shift, offering protection.

Sources say one man never paid one of the girls and so Thorpe mailed him the rats.

The MBTA police released a statement, saying, "Greg Thorpe has been placed on administrative leave pending the results of an internal investigation."

Sources tell CBS Boston officer Thorpe may at some point face charges from Boston police for intimidating a witness and animal cruelty.

Source: CBS Boston

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

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 

African Rat Protects Itself with Poison

Researchers, including U.S. conservationists, say they've discovered the first known mammal to use plant poison to defend itself.

A predator trying to make a meal of the African crested rat is in for a surprise, the researchers said, because the rats apply a poisonous plant toxin to sponge-like hairs on its flanks.

"The African crested rat is a fascinating example of how a species can evolve a unique set of defenses in response to pressure from predators," said study co-author Tim O'Brien of the Wildlife Conservation Society in a WCS release Tuesday.

"The animal and its acquired toxicity is unique among placental mammals."

The researchers discovered the rat gets its poison from the bark of the Acokanthera tree, the same source used by East African hunters for poison arrows, by chewing the bark and applying its saliva to its flanks.

Scientists have long suspected the African crested rat is poisonous, with many accounts of dogs becoming ill or dying after encounters with the rodents.

But instead of producing poison itself, as the duck-billed platypus does, the African crested rat takes its toxin, called ouabain, from the external source, the tree.

A remaining mystery, researchers say, is how the animal uses the poison without succumbing to it.

Source = upi.com

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Rat-Infested, Squid-filled Pirate Boat Sitting Off Alaska

The Seattle-based U.S. Coast Guard cutter Midgett, on a September Bering Sea fishing patrol, got the call for an abrupt change of course. For a days-long voyage, it cruised to the southwest to intercept a rusting, rat-infested vessel — suspected of illegal drift-net fishing — that had been boarded in international waters.

The vessel — the Bangun Perkasa — with 22 Chinese and Indonesian crew members — was not registered with any nation. So, it had been seized.

The Midgett's job was to escort the vessel back to the edge of Alaska's coastal waters in a marathon cruise that began Sept. 19 and ended earlier this week. To prevent evidence from being destroyed, some of the Midgett crew took turns standing watch and sleeping, aboard the Bangun Perkasa.

"These were pretty deplorable conditions," said Capt. Craig Lloyd, chief of response for the Coast Guard's 17th District. "In some cases, they were waking up, and there were rats crawling about."

The seizure of the Bangun Perkasa put a spotlight on international efforts to crack down on illegal high-seas drift-net fishing, which can ensnare birds, marine mammals, turtles and many other sea creatures as well as the targeted species and has been outlawed by a United Nations convention.

Each year, the U.S. Coast Guard joins with other nations to search remote sections of the international waters of the Pacific for illegal drift-net vessels. This year, a Fisheries Agency of Japan spotter plane initially reported the sighting of the Bangun Perkasa to the Kodiak-based U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro, which then conducted the initial boarding.

Typically, the illegal fishing vessels are turned over to law-enforcement authorities in the nation where they are homeported. But the Coast Guard determined that the Bangun Perkasa had no legal registration, so the vessel — along with its 10 miles of drift nets and 30-ton catch of squid — was seized.

As the Bangun Perkasa approached Alaska, the Coast Guard reached out to more than 20 federal, state and other agencies to develop a plan to handle the vessel, which under Alaska state law cannot legally enter coastal waters with rats on board.

Rats are an invasive species in the Aleutian Islands that can prey on birds and other wildlife. Though the port of Dutch Harbor already battles Norwegian rats, there are concerns that the vessel could harbor other species of rats or rodents that would intensify the problem — or rats that are resistant to rodenticides and could breed with the local population, according to Steve Ebbert, a biologist with the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

Earlier this week, U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, suggested the vessel be used for gunnery practice, and sunk.

"It would send an unambiguous signal that pirate fishing is unacceptable," Begich said in a written statement. " It will prevent this rust bucket from ending up back on the market where it most likely would fall into the hands of some other pirate."

But at least for now, that's not the plan.

Instead, the Coast Guard, working with partner agencies, awarded a contract to Magone Marine Service in Dutch Harbor to rid the vessel of rats while it remains moored in offshore waters and to make all necessary repairs. Dan Magone, the owner of the business, is a savvy veteran of all sorts of Aleutian Islands mishaps that require salvage, cleanups and other tasks.

"They don't call us unless its strange, that's a prerequisite," Magone said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

But Magone says he's up to the task of killing the rats, and that the most challenging part of the job has been working through the bureaucracy of agencies.

Once the rats are gone, the Bangun Perkasa, will be turned over to NOAA Fishery agents. They will inspect the vessel and decide what to do with it, and also inspect the 30-ton catch, and decide whether it can be sold.

If a sale is approved, the squid, which has been kept refrigerated, won't be marketed for human consumption, according to Julie Speegle, a NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman in Alaska.

The crew is already in Anchorage, and will be sent back to their home countries, according to Jeff Lisius, of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Source = Associated Press

George Williams
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA