from Hacker News

History of rat control in Alberta

by matteoraso on 12/4/24, 1:14 AM with 93 comments

• by diego_moita on 12/4/24, 4:38 PM

  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.

• by Pikamander2 on 12/4/24, 9:51 PM

  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.

• by johnmaguire on 12/4/24, 4:13 PM

  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!

• by steve_adams_86 on 12/4/24, 9:43 PM

  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

• by id34 on 12/4/24, 4:46 PM

  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

• by paul7986 on 12/4/24, 8:17 PM

  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.

• by neom on 12/4/24, 5:36 PM

  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.

• by smurpy on 12/5/24, 1:16 AM

  I personally saw a rat cavorting quite vivaciously on a pallet of dogfood in the Bonnie Doon K-Mart (in Edmonton, Alberta) in around 2002. I have no basis for any claims about whether said rat was in a committed sexual relationship so cannot make any assertions about whether it was part of a breeding population in Alberta. Perhaps "spontaneous generation" (see Middle Ages) is a thing! Admittedly, it might have been a hapax -- some bold and singular rat Magellan travelling the Earth on bulk food pallets. I dare not presume.

  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.

• by hilbert42 on 12/4/24, 8:59 PM

  "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.

• by Steven420 on 12/5/24, 2:52 PM

  Alberta is an example for the world and especially those knuckle heads down in Florida on how to deal with invasive species

• by barbazoo on 12/4/24, 10:10 PM

  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...