History of rat control in Alberta
alberta.ca
alberta.ca
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.
I've wondered about BC though - outside the density of the lower mainland anyways.
Am I A) blind, B) something about the city here prevents rats from settling, or secret option C) something else entirely?
If you go look at any modern port you will see that the ships have large discs on any line going to shore.
That disc is an anti rat measure. At least one ship I worked on got rats, and we had to deal with them before we left port. Other ships certainly wouldn’t go through the effort.
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.
head south; between Calgary and the border there are lots of snakes, both population and species.
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.
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.
As a New Yorker, it feels unsanitary at best, and psychologically jarring at worst, and I wish I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing rats scurrying around on a daily basis. But there’s been no tangible public health risk so far.
That, and they chew holes in things, occasionally electrical wiring. Not nearly as big a concern as the smell of an infested house, but still not a great thing to have.
There are many parallels between how we think about other species today and how we used to think about other races of humans in the past. Many myths about other races, sexes, etc. that are now both sad and laughable to think about parallel, the myths we still carry about other species.
For example, the rats’ role in spreading disease is now under question. I, personally, have been questioning it for a while, simply from knowing that almost any commercial kitchen has rats and/or mice present, yet not seeing any major disease outbreaks happening that can be attributed to it
Moths? You gotta absolutely eradicate the fuck out of these before they destroy your clothing or your food.
Rats, well, you don't want them in residential areas [1], and you don't want their feces around food preparation areas like kitchen.
Pigeons, especially their poop, are a massive danger for historic buildings [2] - their poop, similar to acid rain in the 80s/90s, is acidic and erodes the substance. In addition, it is extremely nasty to clean up, you need to wear a full PPE suit - our OSHA equivalent has a dedicated guideline just how to protect yourself while cleaning up pigeon poop [3].
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/indi...
[2] https://www.kath.ch/medienspiegel/taubenkot-gefaehrdet-bausu...
[3] https://www.bgbau-medien.de/handlungshilfen_gb/daten/pdf/201...
This is about doing that commercially for a living. If all you do for 40 years of your career is cleaning bird cages, roofs and whatnot from bird droppings, wearing the space suit makes sense because otherwise you're pretty much not going to live to retirement. Lung cancer is a horrible and nasty way to go, and I know on this one what I'm talking about. On top of that come the pathogen infection risks with H1N1 being dangerous enough to send a young man of fine health into critical care [1].
And for what it's worth, of course no one can require you to do so - but you absolutely should be wearing at least an FFP2 mask if dealing with bird droppings or mineral based cat litter of your pets. Try it for once, your lungs will thank you - I certainly noticed the effect.
[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/canadian...
This is all mostly just geographical and time happenstance that baked in a situation and norm. Rats actually aren't native to North America but were introduced with Europeans. They then slowly spread, and Alberta made the choice to stop rats before they took hold in the province. So they started at zero and that made efforts to stop them from taking hold easy if sustained, especially given the brutal winters and inhospitable geography for rats.
[1] - Elsewhere someone referenced hantavirus, yet the overwhelming percentage (basically 100%) of cases of that are from mice in living spaces. Mice like the deer mice that are found throughout Alberta.
>In my field, there’s an equation that best explains rat population size. Simplified, it states: Garbage in = rats out. When food is plentiful, there’s no check on growth. When the cycle of regular feeding has been broken, then rats will disperse, injure, kill and even consume one another.
Source: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/rat-control-in-urban-e...
Rat colonies are the exception, they usually live as "nuclear families", separated from each other. Walk 100m away from a metro station with trashcans containing a dozen of rats near the entrance, and you'll find rat families, not colonies.
However the damages they can cause when they settle inside our houses tend to let us think this is their default modus operandi, and as a consequence we tend to project an exterminatory mindset onto situations where they are not problematic–and I'd even add: situations where they are a necessity.
In particular, if you have a compost box, you'll have a rat family settle nearby, and you shouldn't obsess over it unless you have good reason to fear an invasion (it already happened or you have crops drying in a shed, or something like that).
Saying this as someone who both owned rats at some point and have a dachsund/pinscher who killed hundreds.
And no, fining people for this behavior isn't an option in a neighborhood with stolen bikes burnt every other day, drug dealing spots every 400m, squats, empty cash register lying on the ground, etc ...
Highly recommend it!
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.
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
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.
Part of it is that rat control is like engrained in us through school. There's a certain pride to it, hard to explain.
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
Also another SK HNer checking in!
I live in NYC now and see multiple on a daily basis. Exposure therapy helps, but barely. It still scares the shit out of me a few years in.
And it's a ho, hi
Farmers bar your doors
When you see the Jolly Roger
on Regina's mighty shores
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.
The rat was not concerned by this.
https://arc-solutions.org/article/banff-bears-use-trans-cana...
>> To enter into the wilderness there you can park your car in state park parking lot,
we don't have states or state parks, but provinces and the parks you visited were federal.
Banff, and to a lesser extent Jasper, are pretty tame with respect to "wilderness" but this is mostly a good thing! There's lots of facilities and you can experience them without needing to go into the remote backcountry - but it's there if/when you want to.
There are also electrified crossings with no gates, which always freak me out a bit. They feel like a trap.
To staunch any other niggling, I am neither sure of the year nor whether that property was bearing the K-Mart branding at that time. It has also been a Zellers and a Target, if memory serves.
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.
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.
I had a similar outdoors childhood in a town of about 10k people in a mountainous area about 70 miles from the State's capital city. You can never explain to those who've not experienced growing up that way about how wonderful it is.
One exception however, catching snakes was a no-no for this reason: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake (read the fine print about how venomous it is).
I accidentally stepped on one when I was about 14 and luckily I'm still here. I was running along a bush track and turned into a right-angle bend and the snake—which was out of sight round the bend—was sunning itself in the middle of the track and I couldn't pull up in time—and squish!
The snake shot off in one direction and I did the fastest back-flip in my life in the other direction. I was trembling with fright for about ten minutes after that.
"… No rats."
Perhaps you shouldn't advertise the fact that Saskatchewan is ratless as you might have an influx of migrants (of the human kind that is).
On second thoughts, the last time I was in Saskatchewan (over two decades ago) it was so cold I may as well have been in Antarctica.
Perhaps rats are smarter than we think. Being in 'Antarctica' is just a bit out of their comfort zone.
BTW, I used to keep white rats and mice as pets when I was a kid (they were fun, I used to leave their cage doors open so they could roam and they'd return after exploring).
Only harmless Gardiner snakes here. My dad always hated em tho. His childhood house was infested with em.
There's mountain lions roaming the plains here and they are scary AF. I find them even scarier here because you can see them from a long ways away, and you can tell when they are stalking you. It's safer, because you can see em and they know you see em, but it's scary when it's following you from 500M away.
And yeah, it's extremely cold here. Cold here today. It gets colder here than in the Arctic some parts of winter. It's life threatening. There's a kind of fear of nature present with everyone for about 4 months every year, November - February.
In the US, northern Idaho and Montana are beautiful, people in the states are sleeping on that part of their country.
The best part about growing up on a farm was probably watching my dad wake up every day at 5 and work until sunset with no boss and only his own brain and braun.
Really made me a fiercely independent person.
Except for fleeting glimpses I never watched the Muppet Show so Rizzo is only a name to me.
Also check my reply to nightowl_games about being cold. Reckon during one visit to Calgary I was even colder (damn freezing in fact). No wonder rats don't want to live in Alberta. :-)
its definitely not a prarie dog or a chipmunk
If someone were to observe me waking down the street in the early evening they'd likely see me suddenly start jumping wildly around as if playing hopscotch. It's sort of a game to see how many I can squish during one trip.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/10/18/news/alberta-ucp...
`Canada's National Observer (CNO) delivers vital reporting on the defining crisis of our time: climate change`
did u even read
> POLICY RESOLUTION #12
https://www.desmog.com/2024/11/02/alberta-conservatives-pass...
> In approving the resolution, the UCP resolved to abandon the province’s net zero targets, remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant, and further “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”