[HN Gopher] History of rat control in Alberta
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History of rat control in Alberta
Author : matteoraso
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-12-04 01:14 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.alberta.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.alberta.ca)
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I learned about this from the excellent show Joe Pera Talks With
| You. Season 1, Episode 8: Joe Pera Talks To You About The Rat
| Wars of Alberta, Canada (1950 - Present Day)
|
| Highly recommend it!
| fipar wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation!
|
| In my case, I learned about the existence of the rat wars of
| Alberta thanks to "Your friend the rat" in the Ratatouille DVD,
| back when those were still a thing.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72KsjWUCUJQ
| diego_moita wrote:
| Two important secrets are geography and recent occupation of the
| land. Rats (like sparrows) need to be around human garbage to
| thrive.
|
| Alberta's population is highly concentrated in a central corridor
| that goes from Edmonton to Calgary. Around that there is very
| little population: the Rockies on the West, the Saskatchewan
| prairies on the East, the uninhabited Northwest Territories on
| the North and Montana on the South.
|
| Besides that, the province was established in 1905 and had very
| few people until the oil boom in the 70s.
|
| These 2 factors made it easy to start early and expand the
| extermination gradually. These days the wars are mostly outside
| of the province, to prevent the rats from coming back.
|
| The only rats I've seen here are lab rats, grown under special
| license. I've had also the tiny field mice (actually it is a
| vole) in my backyard but they're very easy to catch: just keep
| the place clean and use a cheap trap once every 4 years.
|
| So our big cities don't have rats but we have lots of sparrows,
| crows, hares, magpies, squirrels, hawks, coyotes, seagulls,
| etc... Sometimes we also have white tail deer and pelicans.
|
| Oh, and we have almost no snakes or other reptiles, too! The only
| one I've seen is the gartner snake but here in Edmonton it is
| just a little bigger than an earthworm.
| soperj wrote:
| Should be possible for saskatchewan to do the same then. No
| reason BC can't either since they've got the rockies, and an
| ocean.
| id34 wrote:
| I believe, as the parent comment alluded to, the rat patrol
| has established a substantial beachhead into SK. The front
| lines are now outside the province and pushing east.
|
| I've wondered about BC though - outside the density of the
| lower mainland anyways.
| morbicer wrote:
| Ocean is not a win. It means large sea ports and hence an
| influx of new rats.
| StayTrue wrote:
| For sure. In my experience there are two places I can go in
| Victoria and be guaranteed to find rats--one is the
| harbour.
| stackghost wrote:
| They say in Vancouver you're never more than 20 feet from
| a rat, anywhere you go. Probably true throughout most PNW
| cities.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's not the 18th century where rats traveled along guy
| ropes on to shore. Rats will travel in containers, but
| that's a problem for where the containers are opened as
| much as it is for the ports.
| bct wrote:
| > The only one I've seen is the gartner snake but here in
| Edmonton it is just a little bigger than an earthworm.
|
| That might just be because Edmonton has lots of enormous dew
| worms :)
|
| There are bigger garter snakes around - I live just outside
| Edmonton and see them pretty frequently. I hear there are
| plenty of rattlesnakes in southern Alberta too.
| id34 wrote:
| Growing up in AB, I really didn't conceptually understand what
| rats are like in other places. I can't think of another animal
| with that same ubiquitousness.
|
| Having no exposure as a kid means I find them terribly terribly
| gross when I see them in other places - in a park in Mexico City
| a couple months ago I audibly jumped when I saw them rooting
| around in gardens. Probably something to be said about exposure
| therapy
| hbn wrote:
| I've lived in Saskatchewan my whole life where we don't have
| this law and I can't say I've seen a lot of rats in my life.
| Maybe if you work in unhygienic restaurant kitchens, or on a
| farm you might see them more. But in the city, it's not a thing
| I can ever remember encountering.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If you're in Saskatchewan and you see rats you call Alberta.
| They'll come by and get rid of them for you.
| dboreham wrote:
| You'll see vast numbers of rats any night in downtown Seattle
| or San Francisco.
| morkalork wrote:
| Been seeing them more frequently in Montreal, apparently the
| city banned some specific poisons used to control the
| population so we end up with fun videos like this: https://ol
| d.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/x5cnu6/sweet_old_...
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I'm also from Saskatchewan, cheers
| hbn wrote:
| There are dozens of us!
| rikthevik wrote:
| -30 reporting in
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| >I can't think of another animal with that same ubiquitousness.
|
| In Toronto, you have rats, Racoons, Canadian geese, and
| pigeons. An infestation almost everywhere downtown and
| throughout the city.
|
| I've seen a rat in Toronto that I mistaken for a Raccoon, it
| was insane how big it was. A crowd of people waiting for the
| Subway started running for their lives as it ran toward them on
| the platform. There is a rat, Racoon, epidemic in Toronto. They
| are everywhere and I don't think there is an effort to try and
| control them. As a matter of fact, I think they may be
| protected by law since I have heard of people almost going to
| jail for trying to chase away Raccoons with a broom.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I also grew up in Alberta, and I never even saw a raw in my
| life until I visited Europe in my 20s.
| throaway250 wrote:
| MB has regular amounts of rats. My dad said he once saw one the
| size of a small cat in an old basement.
| neom wrote:
| I declined a job in Calgary due to this ban. I've kept rats for
| 20 years, couldn't imagine moving to a province I couldn't have a
| pet rat in.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Just glue a bushy tail to them and call them squirrels
| whycome wrote:
| did you know about the ban in advance? Or was it a surprise
| when getting ready to move there? Or did the place disclose
| that during recruitment "FYI, no rats allowed"
| neom wrote:
| I was aware, but the hiring manager thought I would be able
| to work from an office out of BC, however when it came down
| to it, in-person in Calgary was required, so I declined.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I've never in my life heard of an individual person being
| prosecuted for violating the ban keeping a few as a pet at
| home. It's not like there's an inter-provincial border
| inspection checkpoint at the AB border, or house to house
| searches.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Albertans will "rat" (pun-intended) each other out for stuff
| like this.
| whalesalad wrote:
| how is it enforced? what are the penalties?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| There is a dedicated 'rat patrol' as well but for the most
| part it's a government phone number and then reliance on
| citizen reporting. Penalties are fines and destruction of the
| animal in question.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Recently in Banff and Jasper while my comment isn't about rats I
| found Banff's whole Jurrasic Park wilderness to be fascinating.
| Meaning there must be 30 to 60 miles of fencing blocking wildlife
| from entering the highway. To enter into the wilderness there you
| can park your car in state park parking lot, then step up a few
| stairs, open the locked gate and then go down a few stairs into
| the wilderness. For me (from Pennsylvania/Maryland) it had a
| definite Jurassic Park vibe.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| The more interesting part are the bridges where wildlife can
| cross safely above the highway.
|
| https://arc-solutions.org/article/banff-bears-use-trans-cana...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Most people in Alberta had never been in contact with rats and
| did not know what they looked like or how to control them."_
|
| Uh 'Most'!?
|
| What!? Amazing to think there was or is any place in earth except
| say Antarctica where rats were so few and far between that people
| didn't even know what they looked like.
|
| Have none of them ever read Kenneth Grahame's children's book
| _The Wind in the Willows_ and seen various drawings and
| depictions of Ratty?
|
| Strikes me as gross exaggeration and hyperbole, even if they'd
| never seen a rat in real life (which is pretty hard to believe)
| then it's even harder to believe they'd never seen a photograph
| or drawing of one.
|
| For obvious reasons I daren't venture here any further.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and have never seen a rat
| in my life. I've seen plenty of mice, and I've seen a handful
| of rat traps, but I've never actually seen a rat.
|
| And I grew up on a farm in the 90s, no TV, no video games. I
| was outside shooting pellet guns, catching snakes, feeding
| kittens, riding dirt bikes my whole childhood. No rats.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I wasn't allowed to watch Muppet's Christmas Carol as an
| Albertan child due to the presence of Rizzo the Rat.
| tristor wrote:
| This section of the linked article was in the context of the
| 1950s prior to the introduction of this invasive species of rat
| to Alberta. So, yes, at that point in time nobody had been
| exposed to them, because they didn't exist there.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Fascinating. Not far from Alberta, here in Victoria BC I see rats
| on a very regular basis. They're all over the place. I used to
| live in a neighbourhood called Fernwood and had serious issues
| with rats infiltrating all parts of my home and shed. They'd
| create nests in strange places out of any kind of fibre they
| could find. I must have seen one per month at least while walking
| or riding my bike around, skittering across the road or between
| gardens. One time I got to see a hawk swoop down and grab one as
| it ran down the sidewalk.
|
| A couple months ago I saw one making some hilarious vertical hops
| trying to grab onto the siding of my neighbour's townhouse in
| broad daylight. The city is covered in them.
|
| Alberta must have excellent border patrol
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You would expect Victoria to have a shot at eradication given
| that it's on an island.
| mb7733 wrote:
| Good luck, Victoria has a navy base!
|
| Alberta's advantage is being landlocked (and not a natural
| habitat for rats). They managed to keep the rats that arrived
| at the ports from encroaching inland.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| I'm curious as to how many problems rats really cause in a modern
| city. I live in a lightly forested area and have once or twice
| had to scare various rodents out of the attic and patch up a
| small hole they made, but that's about the worst they've ever
| done to me. One time I turned on the porch light at night and saw
| a very long-tailed rat nonchalantly eating from the bird feeder,
| which was fun to watch.
|
| A quick Google search suggests that there are millions of rats
| living in New York City and Los Angeles, but I don't recall
| hearing about any recent catastrophies they've caused. I guess
| it's possible they could someday transmit a new novel disease
| like bats did, so we probably don't wanna let their numbers get
| too high, but other than that, are they really hurting anything?
| I view them about the same as pigeons or moths; occasionally
| annoying, but not something to relentlessly eradicate.
| bawolff wrote:
| > I'm curious as to how many problems rats really cause in a
| modern city.
|
| For context, there is a lot of farmland in alberta. I think the
| reason for this is more to protect agriculture than city
| drewlers.
|
| But also rats are icky.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm surprised they haven't yet switched to celebrating rats, no
| longer recognizing them as a pest /s
|
| https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/10/18/news/alberta-ucp...
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