TRENTON — The town of Trenton has begun looking into ways to lower its rat population.
The discussion follows a late June Select Board meeting where Susan Sargent complained about what was described as a rat infestation.
Sargent said she’s lived in town for 33 years. Her family has had horses, chickens, pigs. “We’ve never had rats,” she said.
That’s changed.
Christina Heiniger volunteered to work with health officer John Bennett on possible solutions and funding through the state.
Now, she said, they’re everywhere, almost down to the coves.
“They’re so destructive,” she said.
“I’ve had several calls about rats,” he said. “Rats are attracted to grain in feeders. I’ve talked with the code enforcement officer to see if there’s anything we can do to be proactive. I’m looking for suggestions. I’m out of ideas.”
“These rats most likely are the Norway rats,” Sargent said. She added of the females, “She can drop a litter and immediately get pregnant with another litter again.”
Norway rats have a litter of eight to 12 pups, four to seven times a year. They reach sexual maturity in approximately two and a half months. The gestation period is 22 days. When living outdoors, they typically breed in spring and fall.
“They’re the most difficult to deal with. They’re destructive,” she said of the Norway rats, which she said have made it down to the coves and a mile radius beyond her home.
“My husband and my neighbors, we go out. There are so many of them. They shoot them. They have chewed walls,” she said. They’ve also chewed a hole in her granddaughter’s playhouse. There is nothing inside the playhouse, she stressed, to tempt them.
She said that they’ve put out bait, live traps, fresh traps. The rats are still going under a six-foot slab under their barn.
“We’ve put bait out. We’ve done live traps. We’ve done fresh traps. Everyone in our area is hunting them,” Sargent said.
“They’re nocturnal. So, if you hear gunshots. We’re out hunting them at night,” she said.
They caught one in a trap. She said, “It was the size of a ferret.”
Rats and other rodents can carry diseases which can transfer to humans and pets.
A rat infestation at Harbor View Memorial Park in Portland led to both the city trying to eradicate the rats and others trying to save them.
In New York City, which has been trying to limit the number of rats for 60 years, officials have been trying to reduce the rat population via the use of a contraceptive dispersed through bait. The hope is that a contraceptive, rather than poison, will keep that population down.
In February, Flaco the owl died after a year-long life of freedom after his escape from the Central Park Zoo. He had hit a building in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. However, a necropsy discovered that the amount of rat poison in his body was life threatening. He also had a pigeon virus.
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