The speculation is roof rats hitched a ride on a trailer or RV, made a new home on an acreage and began reproducing
Rats that hitched a ride from British Columbia and made a nest under a chicken coop near Bon Accord, Alta., have created one of the largest rat infestations in central Alberta.
Fifteen roof rats have died and been positively identified by Sturgeon County officials, who are trying to get rid of the rat infestation that was first identified this spring. However, roof rats are still being found in rural acreages northeast of Edmonton.
Phil Merrill, provincial rat and pest specialist, said it is not uncommon to find Norway rats in Alberta farms in the rat control zone along the Saskatchewan border, but this is the first rat infestation in central Alberta.
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“We don’t usually get an infestation inside the province. They don’t set up shop. We usually get them, or a cat gets them, or they don’t find a safe place to live. Unfortunately they found a place under a chicken coop and started a fairly small infestation,” said Merrill.
“Bon Accord was a fairly small group, a dozen to two dozen rats, and then they multiplied before we got them all. In the rat control zone, we typically get 50 rats in an infestation.”
It’s not clear how the roof rats arrived in Alberta, but it’s believed they hitched a ride from British Columbia on a motor home or trailer.
Roof rats come in from British Columbia, while Norway rats usually come to Alberta overland from Saskatchewan. Roof rats are just as destructive and unwanted as Norway rats.
Angela Veenstra, agricultural fieldman for Sturgeon County, said her office was first notified about a rat in spring. The acreage owner called the 310-RAT hot line and the information was forwarded to the county.
“We went out to the site and confirmed there was in fact a rat and there was evidence there was perhaps more than one,” said Veenstra.
County staff set up bait stations around the cluster of rural acreages to try and get rid of the rats. Rat sightings continued over the summer, and Merrill and staff from municipalities in the rat patrol zone along the Saskatchewan border were called to help find the source of the infestation.
Rats need shelter, food and water to survive. Staff looked around outbuildings and shelters but couldn’t see any obvious location where the rats had moved to from the original chicken coop.
What staff didn’t know was that a retired farmer living in one of the acreages had built a small dump at the back of the property where the rats set up their new home.
“We weren’t combing the trees looking for a dump, we were looking for rat habitat,” Merrill said.
“Originally, we asked the guy and checked around his barn and little chicken coop. There was no place for rats here and we went on. If he had even whispered he had a dump, we would have been over there like a shot.”
The latest rat infestation doesn’t jeopardize Alberta’s rat-free status because there are no established rat infestations in the province.
Most rat sightings are reported by landowners.
“We’re relying almost 100 percent on the public,” he said.
“When we had the infestation in the spring under the chicken coop, that’s how we found it, is the guy who had the chickens told us he had a rat.”
County staff believed the rat problem was under control after the original sighting and baiting, but the calls continued throughout the summer.
“We kept getting single rats once a month or once every two weeks,” Merrill said.
“It would be an area that fanned out from the centre spot, so we knew we hadn’t got them all. We couldn’t find them.”
Rat sightings continued, and in September Sturgeon County staff delivered 300 notices to residents in a two and a half kilometre radius of the original sighting. The rat infestation wasn’t secret, but because of the limited amount of staff, Veenstra wanted to give the rat notices to people who may have rats on their property rather than to residents hundreds of kilometres from the infestation and who could mistake muskrats or other rodents for rats.
Garbage dumps are ideal homes for rats with food buried under the soil. A large infestation of rats was found in the Medicine Hat dump in 2012, and county and provincial staff worked to eliminate them. Two years later, more rats showed up.
“It has been a year and a half and we haven’t been able to find another one. We think we have got them,” Merrill said.
“We thought that in 2012. They’re really hard to get out of a dump. It is a big area with lots of places to hide and you can’t see action because of the garbage. They can burrow down and you won’t hardly see them.”
mary.macarthur@producer.com
