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Comment by Hugsbox | Hacker News Reader

Every so often I'll mention online that Alberta has no rats, and inevitably there will be an American responding in absolute disbelief saying I'm full of shit.

I may not live in Alberta, but luckily rats aren't really a thing in my neck of the woods. Travel an hour down the highway and it's a different story.

Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach before in my life. Not a one. I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.

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"Alberta has no rats" is a bit of a simplification, as the linked article goes into in depth. They do find rat investations (typically) in the border zones, and some sneak through, both wild and domesticated. Due to ongoing management though the statement is true in broad strokes. We have lots of mice and all sorts of ground squirrels (including a ridiculously awesome "museum") but thankfully very few rats.

https://www.gopherholemuseum.org/

Canada's shipping ports have had rat infestations for hundreds of years, even up the Great Lakes. DNA studies show that once a local population became established long ago, it defended itself repeatedly from incursions, and carries on. Alberta has no sea ports, so rats hitch rides there on trains, trucks, and in packaging. The scale is much, much smaller, so Alberta is somewhat able to eradicate them.

The exterminator told me you either have rats or mice. That's 'cuz the rats are good at eating the mice.

In some parts of the world I bet that's true. I can say with a high degree of certainty that I have neither.

Nope, I can personally confirm there is not one single rat in Alberta. I counted them myself - counted the entire rat population in an afternoon. Only took so long because I'm terrible at counting, but I came to a final tally of zero.

I spent the first half of my life in Alberta; had never seen a rat nor a cockroach. I moved further east in the country, cockroaches in my first apartment the first week there... and then discovered rats near the waterfront within the month.

My dad and uncles lived near the southern border as kids, would hunt rats by the train station/grain elevator with a .22 back in the 50's & 60's.

Re: cockroaches, I haven't seen them until my mid 30s, when I started traveling to warm countries.

I grew up in Florida, where you might come home and find a cockroach walking out of the bathroom with a towel around its head saying, "We need more toilet paper."

Okay, I kid, but it was almost that bad. We say there are no houses in Florida without cockroaches, just houses where they (mostly) aren't visible.

Now I live in Singapore, famous for being a clean city, and there are rats and cockroaches galore. Tropics, man....

Living in a warm climate US city i noticed roaches almost disappeared once off the first floor, i saw only one in five years in a 7th-floor apartment.

> I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.

I always thought this was interesting (how many people are super scared of cockroaches). I'm absolutely terrified of bugs, I see cockroaches very rarely, and while I wouldn't pet one... They're not too bad? There's tons of bugs that are way scarier. Spiders, house centipedes, camel crickets. And that's just the stuff that actually exists near me. If I encountered an average Australian insect, good God, I'd run screaming. But cockroaches? Eh

I assume it's because cockroaches are associated with filth, and they tend to occur in large numbers. But as individual bugs, on the surface level they're not too bad. (Not "disagreeing" or anything, just think the different perspectives are neat)

Spiders are beneficial. Please don’t kill them. Cock roaches do spread disease. I buy Combat Source Kill Max Roach Insect Killer Gel with fipronil.

https://www.epa.gov/ipm/cockroaches-and-schools

I'm aware, I don't kill spiders if I can avoid it. And I know cockroaches are nastier. I just think it's surprising that people are so visually afraid of them, since they're not a very scary-looking bug.

Growing up poor, cock roaches symbolize poverty and the run down sad places I used to live in. I can’t stand them as they bring back bad memories of my childhood.

That makes a lot of sense. I didn't think about it that way.

For me it's less fear than an instant "I must kill it / get it out of here" feeling. A big spider or centipede gives me a more intense "creepy crawly" shiver but a cockroach is way higher on the disgust scale for some reason.

That makes total sense actually!

Cockroaches make me uncomfortable, but I would not say I fear them. As a kid I was the designated person in the family to deal with all manner of bugs and just whatever.

Except for whatever reason, I am absolutely terrified of moths and butterflies. I don't want to be touched by either of those ever and I don't want them inside my house. I can appreciate butterflies are pretty and colourful and all that but I still don't want them to be near me.

I live in a wooded, fairly rural area and I see cockroaches outside, under leaves, fallen branches, etc. but they don't really come into the house.

Depending on where you live, those probably aren't the problematic species known as the German cockroach that typically infests human living quarters.

The big ones (oriental, not German) unfortunately come into my house pretty regularly. Setting out poison helps but hasn't rid of us of all of them.

Don’t receive shipments of goods from out of province then. Vermin get transported in packaging easily.

Alberta of course has rats. Short of being a hermit nation with impassable borders, the alternative is impossible.

But they maintain such a critically low number through aggressive, non-stop actions that we declare it "rat free", though that's a misnomer. Similar to the measles free status doesn't actually mean measles free, but rather that it isn't spreading uncontrolled.

Though as someone who lives in Ontario, I just wanted to add that I've never seen a vermin rat in my life in this province. Not in Toronto or its subways, not on its streets, nor in various other cities throughout the province. I've seen mice, of course, but never rats. I know they exist here, but someone having not experienced them doesn't mean much.

This bit made me laugh

But wild rats are rare. Albertans have grown so unaccustomed to rats that they frequently mistake squirrels, gophers, and other small animals for them: of the 875 reported sightings in 2025, only 47 turned out to be actual rats.

I bet most of those were rats

I've seen plenty of rats in Toronto. I used to live around Chinatown and I could practically punt a rat just walking out my door at night.

I lived in Chinatown in Toronto (College and Spadina) and I saw a rat the size of a cat running around the inside of a Chinese supermarket around 2am when I was walking around at night during my university years. I also saw smaller rats and roaches running around Chinese restaurants as well.

where in Toronto did you live?

Definitely not my experience. Lived at Spadina & Dundas.

isn't it kind of moot? there are plenty of other rodents. They fill the gap left by rats. I'm not really sure eliminating all rodents would be a good idea for the ecosystem.

Rats are, to my knowledge, more destructive and spread more disease. Obviously eliminating all rodents would be disastrous for the ecosystem, but rats in particular are an invasive species in North America so eliminating them specifically doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

> Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach

That one is pretty shocking. When I lived in South Carolina I remember I used to walk this one road late at night. Once it was dark enough I could see them scattering underneath the streetlights on the fucking sidewalk. Reminded me of sidewalk lizards in Florida, but grosser. I live in the Midwest now. I’m just glad they’re smaller here and don’t fly.

I'm told that the nearest city to me "probably" has cockroaches, but I avoid the city like the plague so no roach encounters for me thus far. I'm 30 and have never left the Canadian Maritime provinces in my life, so I guess it makes sense that there's plenty of "normal" things I've never come across.

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