Love or hate them, it’s time to celebrate or kill them. With rats, it’s complicated
Once every 12 years the rat gets its due, and 2020 is one of them. This is the Year of the Rat, according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar.
Scientists who study rats say they are empathetic, family-orientated and resourceful animals. The Asian cultures that are gearing up to celebrate the Year of the Rat venerate the creatures for their cleverness and determination.
Yet we seem to be in a centuries-old love them-hate them relationship with rats. For every child beguiled by “Ratatouille,” there’s a parent frantically calling the pest exterminator.
Rat pandemic?
We have only ourselves to blame, experts say. Where there are people, there are rats. They are drawn to our food, our dry attics. They revel in our garbage and carelessness.
Periodically, a local restaurant shuts down and makes headlines because of a rat infestation.
The rodents can consume untended food at prodigious rates, and they still can’t shake that role they played in the Black Death of the Middle Ages.
So when a rat crawled from the toilet at a North End Tacoma home several years ago, the homeowner called Randy Lind.
“That lady was hysterical,” Lind, the owner of Tacoma-based Lind Pest Control and Inspection Services, recalled of the sewer-traveling rat. “There was a trail of water from the toilet to her bedroom.”
Lind caught the rat in the woman’s dresser.
Lind has been in the pest control business for 30 years. He’s seen the number of rats rise over the years with an explosion in the population in the past 15 years.
“It’s pretty much a pandemic,” Lind said. “I don’t care if you’re in Canterwood or Hilltop. They’re everywhere.”
Lind and his crew respond to about 50 rodent calls a month, he said. He attributes the rat explosion to an increase in the human population.
“They’re dependent on us,” Lind said.
His customers call after they’ve heard chewing noises or seen droppings or the rats themselves.
Black boxes
You’ve seen them even if you didn’t know what they were: Handbag-sized black boxes placed discreetly beside buildings or protruding onto a sidewalk. Some are triangular, some are square and some are disguised as rocks.
They’re called bait stations, and, if you’re a rat, they might be one of the last things you ever see.
The boxes have holes that a rat can crawl into. Inside, tucked behind turns and baffles, are secured blocks of poison. The rat must nibble off pieces rather than haul away large chunks.
The poison is an anticoagulant. The rat bleeds to death internally.
The bait station’s construction prevents a child, cat or dog from reaching into it. The poison can’t be shaken out. The lids require a special key to open.
The boxes are meant to be discreet.
“They are made to be small and mundane and not really visible,” Lind said. “People don’t want to let you know — especially businesses and restaurants — that they are treating for rodents.”
Lind says that’s a misguided notion. It’s the restaurants that are not battling rats he worries about.
Year of the rat
Several Asian nations observe the lunar calendar, according to Patsy Surh O’Connell, the president and founder of the Asia Pacific Cultural Center located in South Tacoma.
One of those countries, Vietnam, is the featured nation at the non-profit’s Annual New Year Celebration at the Tacoma Dome on Feb. 8.
O’Connell was born in China and grew up in South Korea — two other nations that observe the lunar calendar. O’Connell was born in the year of the sheep, but she’s fond of rats.
“My husband is a rat year,” she said.
The rat is the first of 12 animals represented in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac.
“The rat is the first (animal) to come to the Buddha’s call, according to legend,” O’Connell said.
Each animal is also paired with one of five elements (wood, fire, earth, water, metal ) to form a 60-year cycle.
“That’s why we celebrate the 60th birthday (as one full cycle of life),” she said.
Although the Cultural Center’s event is scheduled around the Lunar New Year, it downplays that aspect because not all Asian and Pacific cultures observe the Chinese Zodiac.
Although Korea has the same rat problems as the United States, rats were viewed differently there at least when she was growing up in the 1960s, she said.
“They are much more tolerated,” she said. “We, as human beings, are a part of life with the animal.”
The rat’s attributes are admirable, she said.
“They are clever, fast and they do things that other animals don’t,” she said.
Year of the Rat events
▪ Asia Pacific Cultural Center’s Annual New Year Celebration, 10:30 a.m. Feb. 8, Tacoma Dome. Entertainment, food and cultural activities. Info: asiapacificculturalcenter.org/newyear
▪ Lincoln District’s Annual New Year Celebration, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Feb. 9, South 38th Street in the Lincoln District, Tacoma. Music, food, lion dancing and firecrackers. Info: Facebook
Randy Lind’s tips for keeping rats out of your home
▪ Don’t leave pet food outdoors.
▪ If you feed wild birds, limit birdseed from collecting beneath feeders.
▪ Remove or limit vegetation making contact with your house. Ivy and blackberry are favorite nesting spots.
▪ If you raise chickens, you’re probably also raising rats.
▪ Eliminate any opening into a building that is half an inch or larger. “I don’t care how big the rat is, it can squeeze down,” Lind said.
This story was originally published February 2, 2020 at 7:05 AM.
