> But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.
Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!
Is it only the dose? I think I read somewhere that rodents are especially vulnerable to this substance for some genetic reason. To lazy to check again. Not to lazy to pronounce my ignorance in a comment. Oh my.
"One mayor refused to cooperate because he thought the program was a distraction cooked up by the ruling United Conservative Party."
The UCP was established in 2017 and has no relation to the Social Credit Party that controlled Alberta's legislature during the time period being spoken of.
Saying "no relation" is almost stretching it a bit. I kinda give hats off to someone for the slipup. It's not the same legal entity but there's a continuous ideological (and even personal) connection going all the way back.
The way I see it ... Peter Lougheed through Getty and (arguably Stelmach era) was a bit of a brief interruption. His urban, pragmatic PCs pushed the older rural, evangelical Socreds out of power in the 70s.. but that populist movement just went briefly into a (vaguely) outsider status, organized through Alberta Report, etc got into Klein's cabinet, found a national voice in Preston Manning's Reform Party, and returned provincially via the Wildrose Party, and finally triumphally recaptured the province under the banner of the UCP
So not legally the same part, but frankly just really the same minus all the weird fixation on currencies, banks, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (... so far!)
Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve lived in Ontario (in cities and the country) and have never seen a rat here. I know they exist but it’s not like we’re inundated by them. Maybe some specific businesses have problems with them, but it’s not something you see every day.
I also lived in Montreal and did see them there sometimes. This was always early morning when I was out running - did not see them in Toronto, Ottawa, etc under similar conditions.
Edit based on reading some other comments: I have seen lots of coyotes and foxes so maybe that explains fewer rats. I know Montreal has coyotes but I’ve never seen them there and where I was there were also squirrels everywhere suggesting fewer predators.
I live in Ottawa and I watched a crow rip a dead brown rat apart in my front street this week. I don’t see them often but they’re here. (I swear I live in a nice neighbourhood)
There are certainly rats in Hamilton and Toronto; and I had the misfortune of dealing with them in my home at one point. They ate through (or under) the crawl space, and they would eat through anything we tried to store food in.
Unlike the sibling though I couldn't claim a nice neighborhood, it was near a soy processing factory.
I care about the Lyme more than the rats tbh. That is way more likely to fuck you up long term than anything a rat will bring in this day and age. We aren’t getting the black plague anymore.
A tick bite in alberta? diagnosed lyme? when? seems very unlikely - there are no recorded cases in the 30+ years of tracking of a case of lyme disease from a bite _in alberta_. All from exposure elsewhere
(not to say that alberta will stay that lucky forever)
this is out of date information unfortunately. With warming climate, the black-legged tick has spread into Alberta and samples have been found with the Lyme disease bacterium.
The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat
It's possible even the strongest believers in privatized-everything-is-better can change their minds given time & enough examples of effective public sector.
Around here the coyotes eat mice. I'll see a golf ball size blob of crushed bones and fur on the driveway now and then.
A few years ago, a coyote mom with her 5 pups set up shop on my front lawn. She'd keep a weather eye on me, and me on her, and we got along fine. Over the summer, the number of pups dwindled. I saw a severed head of one a ways away, I think it was done by an eagle. I think only 2 survived the summer.
I sometimes see 6 eagles at a time circling overhead. One flew by so close I could have touched its wingtip. Wow!
A bobcat lives nearby. I see his tracks in the snow, and saw him a couple times.
I live well within the Seattle metropolitan area. Isn't it amazing?
This inevitably brings us to the story of the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone, and how they eat the deer which brings back a whole new slew of changes.
Not to be downer, but recent studies have not corroborated those effects.
>One of the most celebrated claims about Yellowstone’s wolves is facing a major challenge. Scientists say the study behind the famous trophic cascade story relied on flawed methods that overstated the ecological impact of wolf recovery. Their reanalysis found no evidence for a dramatic, park-wide surge in willow growth. Instead, the effects appear smaller and vary from place to place.
There are tons of coyotes in Alberta, to the point where my very urban university has had to put up "Be Coyote Smart" signs since they keep showing up on campus. Nobody that I'm aware of is trying to eradicate coyotes here either, aside from the occasional farmer during calving season.
Great read. I didn't know how exactly the rats were eradicated from Alberta something I have just heard and taken for granted. Reading the article provided a great overview of how much effort it really took to do it.
I would like to mention that, even though Alberta is rat free, we still have mice that can make your life misreble if they somehow enter your house/office.
Here in Boise Idaho, we are watching the local governments completely fail. We've not had rats here until somewhat recently. The State, County, and cities have all taken a "not our problem" attitude to it and instead of putting in any sort of pest management/eradication programs they've basically just said "good luck everyone".
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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....
> 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
The whole public buy-in is very much what is going on in Queensland, Australia right now that is attempting to eradicate fire ants. Even the funding fight to get the Commonwealth and neighbouring states to pitch in, as they have the potential to become endemic to the whole continent.
We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.
Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.
> But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.
Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!
The dose makes the poison. Warfarin is prescribed as a blood thinner for humans.
Is it only the dose? I think I read somewhere that rodents are especially vulnerable to this substance for some genetic reason. To lazy to check again. Not to lazy to pronounce my ignorance in a comment. Oh my.
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Poor guy, must of had so many complications
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A correction:
"One mayor refused to cooperate because he thought the program was a distraction cooked up by the ruling United Conservative Party."
The UCP was established in 2017 and has no relation to the Social Credit Party that controlled Alberta's legislature during the time period being spoken of.
Saying "no relation" is almost stretching it a bit. I kinda give hats off to someone for the slipup. It's not the same legal entity but there's a continuous ideological (and even personal) connection going all the way back.
The way I see it ... Peter Lougheed through Getty and (arguably Stelmach era) was a bit of a brief interruption. His urban, pragmatic PCs pushed the older rural, evangelical Socreds out of power in the 70s.. but that populist movement just went briefly into a (vaguely) outsider status, organized through Alberta Report, etc got into Klein's cabinet, found a national voice in Preston Manning's Reform Party, and returned provincially via the Wildrose Party, and finally triumphally recaptured the province under the banner of the UCP
So not legally the same part, but frankly just really the same minus all the weird fixation on currencies, banks, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (... so far!)
All of this off topic from rats. (Maybe?)
I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve lived in Ontario (in cities and the country) and have never seen a rat here. I know they exist but it’s not like we’re inundated by them. Maybe some specific businesses have problems with them, but it’s not something you see every day.
I also lived in Montreal and did see them there sometimes. This was always early morning when I was out running - did not see them in Toronto, Ottawa, etc under similar conditions.
Edit based on reading some other comments: I have seen lots of coyotes and foxes so maybe that explains fewer rats. I know Montreal has coyotes but I’ve never seen them there and where I was there were also squirrels everywhere suggesting fewer predators.
Maybe the rats only speak French and avoid primarily English-speaking provinces.
I live in Ottawa and I watched a crow rip a dead brown rat apart in my front street this week. I don’t see them often but they’re here. (I swear I live in a nice neighbourhood)
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There are certainly rats in Hamilton and Toronto; and I had the misfortune of dealing with them in my home at one point. They ate through (or under) the crawl space, and they would eat through anything we tried to store food in.
Unlike the sibling though I couldn't claim a nice neighborhood, it was near a soy processing factory.
You sure see them everyday in Metro Vancouver
I care about the Lyme more than the rats tbh. That is way more likely to fuck you up long term than anything a rat will bring in this day and age. We aren’t getting the black plague anymore.
Around 7 people the US get the plague each year. Yes that’s low, but it’s low specially because measures actively keeping it low.
Which means understanding and maintaining these systems is still valuable as even if millions aren’t actively dying, that can change,
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Albertan here too. Can confirm no rats
My friend got Lyme disease from a tick though so I can't agree with that part
A tick bite in alberta? diagnosed lyme? when? seems very unlikely - there are no recorded cases in the 30+ years of tracking of a case of lyme disease from a bite _in alberta_. All from exposure elsewhere
(not to say that alberta will stay that lucky forever)
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> the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
this is out of date information unfortunately. With warming climate, the black-legged tick has spread into Alberta and samples have been found with the Lyme disease bacterium.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/tick-lyme-diseas...
They likely spread rocky mountain fever instead, if they are dog ticks like we have in Colorado.
They don’t spread Lyme yet
From Alberta, never saw a rat in my life until visiting BC...
Gophers everywhere though.
The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat
I learned all about this from Joe Pera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM
See also this exploration from Strange Aeons: https://youtu.be/vMOMa-4D1yQ?si=t1uxfY1pEDh2a44Y
One of the bonus features of the movie Ratatouille has a short video-game sequence about it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-2xD9ShhMZU
There was a Joe Pera episode where they made a musical about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM.
Tom Scott did a video a few years ago about New Zealand's attempt to eliminate rats by 2050.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcp1BfPUeOc
The program is actually called "Predator Free 2050" and also aims to eliminate possums and stoats. No mention is made of Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs.
>Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs
Aren't they native?
Had they not been so greedy mining for mithril, maybe there wouldn't have been Balrogs. Not sure if that makes Balrogs invasive.
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Uruk-hai are GMO
So, even impossible things can be made possible if there's enough determination and political will.
eliminate malaria from the continental US. Check.
eliminate smallpox. Check.
eliminate measles. Own goal.
Don't forget screwworms!
https://cr.usembassy.gov/sections-offices/aphis/screwworm-pr...
Another own goal - eliminate screw worm from north america...
Is it your position that private pest control could not achieve the same or better result for at most the same cost?
Are you an economic calculation problem denier?
It's possible even the strongest believers in privatized-everything-is-better can change their minds given time & enough examples of effective public sector.
Can you keep going and generate more assumptions about me?
We sure have a lot of gophers though. They are cuter but you should still treat them like rats, no touch or try to play with them. Lots of diseases...
Related:
On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech, global war on rats (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9540096 - May 2015 (32 comments)
I thought there had been other threads about this but couldn't find them. Anyone?
New York claims a small victory in 'forever war on rats' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730337 - Nov 2017 (3 comments)
Lots of rodents in Alberta. The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice. We need more bullsnakes.
> The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice
They aren't doing a good job of keeping them "down" if they're on planes.
Airports have tons of food (grass environment + human garbage), tons of mouse habitat (grassy areas, outbuildings, machinery), and not many cats.
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Time to flip the Samuel Jackson quote upside down, we need more mf'in snakes on the mf'in plane!
I wonder if we stopped trying to eradicate coyotes we might have an easier time with rats. I personally would rather see a coyote than a rat.
Around here the coyotes eat mice. I'll see a golf ball size blob of crushed bones and fur on the driveway now and then.
A few years ago, a coyote mom with her 5 pups set up shop on my front lawn. She'd keep a weather eye on me, and me on her, and we got along fine. Over the summer, the number of pups dwindled. I saw a severed head of one a ways away, I think it was done by an eagle. I think only 2 survived the summer.
I sometimes see 6 eagles at a time circling overhead. One flew by so close I could have touched its wingtip. Wow!
A bobcat lives nearby. I see his tracks in the snow, and saw him a couple times.
I live well within the Seattle metropolitan area. Isn't it amazing?
Over across the sound, we get bald eagles stealing salmon off of people's grills :)
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This inevitably brings us to the story of the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone, and how they eat the deer which brings back a whole new slew of changes.
Not to be downer, but recent studies have not corroborated those effects.
>One of the most celebrated claims about Yellowstone’s wolves is facing a major challenge. Scientists say the study behind the famous trophic cascade story relied on flawed methods that overstated the ecological impact of wolf recovery. Their reanalysis found no evidence for a dramatic, park-wide surge in willow growth. Instead, the effects appear smaller and vary from place to place.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260613215510.h...
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There are tons of coyotes in Alberta, to the point where my very urban university has had to put up "Be Coyote Smart" signs since they keep showing up on campus. Nobody that I'm aware of is trying to eradicate coyotes here either, aside from the occasional farmer during calving season.
Coyote populations are climbing, not shrinking.
I know, which makes our attempts at killing them even dumber.
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fox eat rats too
Farmers and pet-owners might prefer the rats.
https://www.alberta.ca/albertas-rat-control-program
Relevant government website for those curious
We have online reporting for rat sightings that they take action on
Great read. I didn't know how exactly the rats were eradicated from Alberta something I have just heard and taken for granted. Reading the article provided a great overview of how much effort it really took to do it.
I would like to mention that, even though Alberta is rat free, we still have mice that can make your life misreble if they somehow enter your house/office.
Here in Boise Idaho, we are watching the local governments completely fail. We've not had rats here until somewhat recently. The State, County, and cities have all taken a "not our problem" attitude to it and instead of putting in any sort of pest management/eradication programs they've basically just said "good luck everyone".
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.
"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.
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The exterminator told me you either have rats or mice. That's 'cuz the rats are good at eating the mice.
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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
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
[dead]
there's no rats but there has been an uptick in voles and other rodents
also Alberta, Canada mentioned
Albertan here. Never seen a rat outside of a research lab. We do have mice though.
I wonder if people could do bed bugs? Those are rather annoying.
And pigeons!
The whole public buy-in is very much what is going on in Queensland, Australia right now that is attempting to eradicate fire ants. Even the funding fight to get the Commonwealth and neighbouring states to pitch in, as they have the potential to become endemic to the whole continent.
We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.
... ... all i learned is that eventually Alberta will have rats, and that nowhere else can ever replicate their success. Thank you, next
> Author: Deena Mousa
clearly an article sponsored by Big Mouse
Clever joke. FYI Mousa is the Arabic pronunciation of Moses.
Anglicized Arabic I guess. In my spelling, it is Musa.
Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.
The irony that they figured out how to eliminate rats, but can’t diversify from oil and gas is pretty special.
It's unsurprising from a financial perspective, since both oil and gas (directly) and rat eradication (indirectly) make the province a ton of money.
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Also, many of them are sepa-RAT-ists.