From mgs@aae.wisc.edu Sat May 29 00:41:20 1999 Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 17:41:41 -0500 From: "Michele Gale-Sinex/CIAS, UW-Madison" To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Rats Howdy, all-- Phil Gilman wrote, in response to my posting about composting in an urban setting: > So a few rodents get into the compost- woopdy doo- What difference > does it really make? Get a cat or dog- that will take care of the > rats- > > just my 2 farm cents (not worth much anymore) Phil, you are presenting the viewpoint that I mentioned yesterday: that strategies and technologies that work in rural areas must also work in urban ones. When I say urban, I'm not talking a college town, like Mark's --Amherst, Mass.--nestled on the plain between the Berkshires and scenic route 202, sprinkled with some of the Seven Sisters. I'm talking a megalopolis of tens of millions of people, stretching from Boston to D.C. A few rodents? Kate wrote from Philadelphia. Urban areas like Philadelphia have rat populations in the millions. They live in steam tunnels, electrical conduit tunnels, subways, sewers, and other extensive, hidden, human-made burrows. Not to mention houses, buildings, and other structures. Female Norway rats (/Rattus norvegicus/) have three to seven litters per year, each litter, 6 to 12 pups. Within 24 or 48 hours of giving birth, female Norways are capable of being in heat again. One rat, one year, up to 84 new rats. Roof rats (/Rattus rattus/) are nearly as prodigious. They reproduce pretty much as fast as they eat. Feed a city rat for a few months, and you add hundreds of rats to the ecosystem. Equally voracious, equally prodigious. Rats can swim rivers, fall 50 feet without being injured, chew thru electrical wires and short out a circuit without being harmed...city rats have few or no predators, and your average house-bound, complacent urban dog or cat isn't going to tangle with them. But even if we could count on this UberPet to go a-ratting in the city...how many dogs and cats do you think it would take to control rat populations of this size? How many rat-hunting dogs and cats would be temperamentally fit to live in the confines and constraints of an urban setting--it's not like letting them run around the farm, you know. When I lived downriver from Philadelphia, there were rats of a size and temperament that took down dogs and cats for breakfast. Sometimes in gangs. Children too, but I don't want to tell emergency room stories right now. George Orwell wasn't making that up, in /1984/. He knew about rats from people's experiences in the London slums. You may not see "a few rodents" as a problem in rural areas. The urban ecosystem is quite different. For instance, in 1347, a few rodents disembarked from Genoese merchant ships docked in Sicily after returning from the Black Sea. Within a year, bubonic plague outbreaks had occurred in Marseilles, Paris, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Within five years, 25 million people--a third of the population of Europe--had died. Some cities lost 2/3rds of their populations. China is believed to have lost over 35 million people at that time. Plague bacilli (/Yersinia pestis/) are carried by fleas, which are carried by rats. Within three to four days of being bitten by a plague-carrying flea, a person who died from the plague would experience high fevers and body pain, with black swellings of the lymph nodes coming soon thereafter. Within a day or two, the swellings burst, and the infected person vomited blood. The person then died. Rats also carry ticks, and thus tick-borne diseases (such as the spirochetes that cause Lyme disease). In addition, a study in the mid-1980s found that 12% of urban rats in Philadelphia and 64% in Baltimore tested seropositive for Seoul virus, a Hantaan-like virus that can produce a hemorrhagic fever, but more often a renal syndrome. (For reference, see http://www.uct.ac.za/microbiology/ebolaess.html) Rats also carry murine typhus, and spread salmonella, leptospirosis, and trichinosis. Where they come into contact with food, they can spread all these diseases, as well as hantaviruses. Rats live only a year. This combined with their reproductive capacity means that any life form (virus, insect, bacterium, etc.) that can move quickly from host to host can always find new rats to serve as vectors, even if it is hugely deadly. That is, the colonizing life form can kill its host...but new hosts are quickly supplied. So. There in a nutshell is the woopdy-doo difference about rats in cities. They are like cockroaches, McDonalds, tax lawyers, and SUVs: there is no such thing as "a few" of them in major urban areas. Once again, I'd like to underscore this issue of assuming that things that work on farms must also work in cities. We've all seen what happens when the opposite assumption gets made. Appropriate technology means, in part, appropriately place-based technology. We who advocate for food production and sustainable living in urban areas have got to be careful in our thinking about such things, if we expect to see the cities re-greened with food. We've got to know our urban spaces as well as rural farmers know theirs. I liked Ronald Nigh's off-list observation that chickens are ideal recyclers for cities: small, eat anything, and quickly convert it to earthworm fodder. But thanks to the poor adaptation of poultry systems to urban environments in the early parts of this century, people came to believe that they were, by necessity, dirty, smelly, noisy creatures. peace misha <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager Center for Integrated Ag Systems UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020 http://www.wisc.edu/cias/ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Pressure? Pressure was when I was a shoeshine boy trying to make it to America. --Sammy Sosa To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From mmmille6@facstaff.wisc.edu Tue Jun 1 22:59:17 1999 Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 04:26:51 -0500 From: Michelle M. Miller To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: rat digression FYI - thought those of you interested in rats might enjoy reading the following post to IPMnet listserve on farmer rat control strategies around the globe. Seems that these techniques could be used in urban as well as rural areas,and for other rodent problems like squirrels, opposums(not a rodent, but a problem), etc. ------------------------- * Rodents = A Big Problem Globally * ------------------------- | Rodent pests, particularly rats, pose a significant field and stores problem in many of the world's crop-growing areas. Based on his extensive experience with a variety of approaches to pest control and management strategies, K. Gallagher--a staff member of the Global IPM Facility at FAO, Rome--recently described some general principles that seem to be common across the programs of farmer groups attempting to cope with rat control, whether in Asia, Africa, or elsewhere,. Dr. Gallagher has generously agreed to share his interesting observations with IPMnet NEWS readers. 1. "Know thy enemy" seems to be very important. Farmer groups study the characteristics of rats--longevity, fecundity, bait shyness, swimming ability, nest structure, local migration/movement trails, population levels with trap and release, teeth configuration, etc. This helps to demystify [the pest] and to make control plans easier. Apparently, different species have different bait preferences in- cluding taste, texture, and size of bait (e.g large blocks vs. smaller grains). 2. "Know thy territory" is another principle that comes with community mapping and marking of preferred living sites and movement. This practice should be conducted during various seasons as food resources and habitat change over the year. 3. "Prepare thy arsenal" with testing of traps, baits, digging, smok- ing, and barriers for fields and storage bins. This technical part seems to be where many programs begin, but it is only one aspect. One program in Sumatra developed a program called "One Million Traps" and communities literally made one million traps in the area! Be prepared to modify habitat to reduce nesting sites. 4. "Be smarter than the rats themselves" which is not easy! At least we people have organizational structures. Getting organized into "rat patrols" to prepare village sub-units to monitor, trap, bait, and dig holes on a regular long-term basis is important. Maintaining vil- lage records, maps, and reporting are part of the rat patrol job. One village person should be the "King Rat" (or some other socially ap- propriate name). Prepare a "Rat Manual" in the village for future reference on how it was all done for reference when rats emerge as a problem once again. These emerge as common points. The key to successful programs seems to be "prolonged organization." Rat campaigns give temporary relief, but rats spring back. Eradication is useless unless you live on an island. High tech, low tech, appropriate tech, and other techs are all ineffective without sustained action over time. FMI: K. Gallagher, Global IPM Facility, FAO, Rome, ITALY. E-mail: . --excerpted from: Afrik-IPM Discussion List; e-mail: . <#> To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail