Increase in rat sightings just another pandemic byproduct

With many restaurants closed, rodents move from dumpsters behind malls, businesses to residential neighborhood backyards

As devastating as the human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, it also has created myriad disruptions to life as we knew it, from remembering to bring a mask to keeping us cooped up at home with our families.

And, for many, with rats and mice.

The increase in rodent activity has been going on for a while, said pest-control experts, but the food supply has changed since Connecticut went into lockdown in March. No longer able to dine at the dumpster behind their favorite restaurants, the experts said, rats have been on the move, away from the closed businesses downtown and in the suburban shopping plazas and to the garbage cans behind our homes.

And we, tossing out more garbage because we’re working and eating at home more often, are their new suppliers, experts say.

However, the changes wrought by COVID have only highlighted what has been occurring over the last few years: an explosion in wildlife populations, especially of rodents.

“It’s absolutely mindboggling. This year is unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Rocco Cambareri, co-owner with his wife, Jane, of Insecta X in Norwalk.

Normally, calls for rats and mice increase in late fall and winter, when the rodents are looking for warm places to hide out and any opening in your foundation is going to attract an intruder.

“Rats are rats. It’s not like they hibernate,” Cambareri said. “But you see more of them in the fall and winter because they need warmth.”

But the increased rat sightings this spring and summer may have two COVID-related causes: less business at restaurants and more people noticing the rodents because they’re at home more.

“There’s a lot of restaurants where I live and it’s right smack in the residential area,” said Cambareri, who lives in Fairfield. “Then the residents are seeing more activity in their own yards.”

Rodents have been moving “from the garbage dumpsters to the garbage cans in the residence,” he said.

“I haven’t been inundated with phone calls about rats,” Cambareri said. “But I know for a fact that there’s rats running around because of COVID.”

To make sure they’re not running around your house, he advised not leaving pet food or water outside, be sure garbage cans are closed tightly and “look around your foundation. If you see a hole, get it patched up,” he said. Garage doors, especially the rubber strip at the bottom, are also potential entryways. “A rat can chew through metal if it wants to. It can chew through concrete if it wants to,” Cambareri said.

Mike Lipsett, owner of Connecticut Pest Elimination in Orange, said “the rodent population in Connecticut and here in New England has gone through the roof” for as much as the last seven or eight years.

“I have never ever seen the amount of rodent activity that we have right now,” he said. “Fifty percent of the calls to our office right now is rodents, rodents, rodents.”

Lipsett said people may be noticing more rats because they’re home more during the pandemic.

“Is it possible that there could be more rat or rodent calls because the average household has more trash because they’re home and not going out? That’s a possibility,” he said.