Year of the rat
Rodents abandoning empty restaurant bins to forage in CBRM neighbourhoods
Rodents abandoning empty restaurant bins to forage in CBRM neighbourhoods.
SYDNEY — People living near restaurants might soon have some unwelcome neighbours and house guests.
Rats lost one their most abundant and convenient food sources when eateries across the Cape Breton Regional Municipality either closed or switched over exclusively to takeout and drive-thru service as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now those rats have begun exploring nearby neighbourhoods foraging for things to eat, as well looking for safe places to live and breed.
HISTORICAL PRECEDENT
Chad Flemming, co-founder and technician at Aegis Pest Control Solutions, has had twice as many Norway rat calls this spring.
“One of the ramifications of the quarantine is the decentralization of waste. You go to a restaurant and normally all that waste generated by your sitin service goes in their garbage and goes in their Dumpster. Now that’s going home with you. The French Quarter in New Orleans was completely inundated with rats. In New York, the rat colonies are cannibalizing each other because of the food shortages from their perspective. I would say rat calls are up double anyway during all of this,” said Flemming, who compared it to when Tartan Downs harness racing track closed.
“There’s historical precedent. Look at what happened on Upper Prince Street when they shut down most of the activity at the race track — everybody in that (Sydney) neighbourhood ... got inundated with rat activity. With people generating more waste cooking at home, eating their meals at home, taking that takeout home — all that stuff is now going to be centralized there. Just think about how many work lunches, how many going-out-to-eatfor-supper things just don’t happen right now. They’re coming home. So creatures that need that, that rely on that to survive, will adapt to that scenario, too.”
MORE MOBILE
Bruce Hatcher, a biologist at Cape Breton University, said rats are “fast-responding animals” that are capable of moving quickly and effectively.
“They’re small enough that they can find ways to move relatively large distances without being detected, even if it’s all paved, by hugging the gutters and the edges of buildings,” he said.
“The neighbours weren’t seeing them because the rats are smart in a certain way, and they’ll stay where the food is — they’re not going to take risks and go wandering around relatively foodfree areas of the city when they can stay in one place and get more than enough. When you take that away, what are they going to do? They’re going to forage. They’re going to go out. They’ve been coming to this bin all their lives and there’s always something in the bin for them. Now they’ve been coming to the bin for four days and there’s nothing in it so they’re going to recognize that this is not working for them and they’re going to become more mobile.”
WILDLIFE MOVING IN
It’s not just rats that are on the move. Hatcher said there are examples all over the world of wildlife moving into new areas as a result of COVID-19.
“As a result of humans staying in their homes and vacating the public spaces of their villages, towns, cities, metropolises, wildlife is reclaiming those spaces. It’s already a well-documented thing, whether you’re talking about large predators moving in that people always knew were on the outskirts but would never dare to come in, or ungulates — deer or moose — so that’s going to apply across the board.
"We need to realize that we’re not the only animals to occupy the world — we don’t like other animals sharing space with us except for our chosen pets and pretty birds that sing, so we make it hard for them. And also much of our environment is not particularly other-animal friendly because we tend to like things like grass closely shorn, trees trimmed and not having their branches extend down to the ground.
"We don’t like dirt, so if there’s dirt we tend to pave it or cover it in those wood chips that they treat with poison so nothing else will grow there. When you stop doing that stuff, when people are not out there maintaining those spaces and we’re not in those spaces, we shouldn’t be surprised to be seeing more animals that are already with us but more cryptic, hidden, afraid of us, visually becoming more obvious because we are not occupying those spaces. They were always there and now they’re starting to go out and make use of them as they did before we built our cities.”
NOT ALL CUTE
Flemming said people are sharing photos of animals like foxes visiting their backyards during COVID19. However, they’re likely there because there are rats in the area.
“Everybody is sitting home cooking breakfast for their family on a weekday for the first time in years and there’s deer in their backyard, or there’s foxes in their backyard. Wildlife is coming in and it’s not just the cute wildlife — there’s also the non-cute wildlife,” he said. “So for example, foxes. Well what do foxes eat that’s so dependent on people? They’re not Dumpster-diving critters, they’re not looking to get into the Chinese food place’s Dumpster. They’re foraging for small, tasty mammal things. You can’t think there’s less rodents because the evidence would suggest that that’s not true — there’s not less rodents. So why is he coming next to your house then? Because there’s rodents at your house, that’s why.”