Peter Croal

I stared my morning as usual. Get the paper, turn on a light, make sure the car is still in the driveway and then head to the kitchen to make a cup of my favourite coffee.

I like to look in the backyard with my cup of steaming optimism and hope to see what’s happening. Are there any new birds at the feeder? Is that confounded cat using our garden as a litter box again?

Next, I survey the lawn to see if a resident skunk has turned over what’s left of our bedraggled grass on the prowl for a lawn grub. I note that the squirrels were again plotting how to get on our pole feeder. But then I spot something at the base of the pole scurrying around chasing the squirrels to get at the birdseed. It was fat like a squirrel, and brown, but it didn’t have the markings of a chipmunk.

I take another sip of coffee to help me focus on the tail. Yikes! There’s no hair on the tail. That was no squirrel with premature balding, but a rat! I start uttering rat-isms. My wrath is ratcheted upward, while I rattled the window. Ratcatching is ratty behaviour that I would not want to ratify as a rational ratepayer

An invasion of rats

in which co-existence is a central theme, I knew this rat and its brethren had to go. Three weeks later I had snap-trapped six rats. A rat can reach sexual maturity at 12 weeks and produce 12 litters a year, each of which averages eight to nine new rats. Getting rid of them from your property is a priority.

It is also a priority for the City. Ottawa’s new Pied Piper on City Council is Riley Brockington, who heads up the Rat Mitigation Working Group formed in 2022. Yes, indeed, Ottawa has a rat problem – and Old Ottawa East (OOE) experienced an invasion of rats in the fall, an event that made local CBC headlines.

These furry scuttlers were spotted roaming in parks, in backyards and even in a toilet. The City was called many times by OOE residents, and a sewer-baiting program was initiated, which seems to be having positive results.

OOE resident and self-proclaimed rat catcher extraordinaire, Jamie Brougham, says that three words came to mind when he saw rats in his backyard: “uncomfortable, gross and nuisance.” One day he saw five at once under his bird feeder. His eradication campaign resulted in two rats being live-trapped and released across the river in a forest, and five others that he dispatched as painlessly as possible. He also took down his bird feeder and secured his compost bin.

When asked what he thought of the City’s response, he applauded their efforts. “The City is doing a great job. It responded very quickly to our concerns and the sewer-baiting seems to have worked,” Brougham replied.

Everyone’s priority

That being said, the task of eliminating rats shouldn’t just be up to the City. Councilor Brockington stresses that eliminating food sources for the rats must be a priority for all residents. This means that all Ottawans should keep pet feeding trays inside, remove apples from the ground when they fall, ensure your compost bin is as secure as possible, don’t put food waste in public waste bins and remove bird feeders.

These measures don’t have to be permanent but are crucial during a rat infestation. If you see one rat, you can be sure there are more nearby. And due to the amorous and frequent breeding activity of rats, a neighborhood can be overrun very quickly. Road construction can cause a rat nest to move and possibly take up residence under your deck. This was our experience.

You should also have a good look at your property to see if there are any holes that a rat can get into. They must be sealed with wire mesh. And try to seal off your deck so they cannot scurry underneath, a fix that will also prevent skunks from moving in.

Ottawa is evaluating whether rat birth control could be a control option. Teaching rats to abstain from amorous behaviour is not an option. Rather, bait traps that have the birth control would be set out at strategic locations. The City could make a decision on this strategy next year.

In the meantime, Councilor Brockington stresses that eliminating food sources and educating the public is key. New York City has appointed a Rat Czar to combat the problem and the city takes a theatrical approach to the problem. A New Yorker dressed up in a rat costume scurries around the city checking garbage bins, hauling huge pizza slices made of fabric and sitting atop various public objects. The human rat does help draw attention to the very serious rat infestation in New York City.

While I doubt I will dress up in a rat costume, I did take the bird feeder down for a month and made sure our property was as rat-proof as possible. This seemed to have helped. My morning coffees are now rat-ional and rat-ed as no longer rat-ty.
For more information on rat control, scan the QR code below.