Rats didn’t eat my candlesticks or anything else related to the play but we did have a pretty big infestation in the alley behind Giant and CVS late in the summer. Although the neighbors told me about them, at first I didn’t see any in my yard. Out of sight, out of mind… so I didn’t worry about it. Then one day I was putting some kitchen scraps (fruit & vegetable scraps only – no fats, grease or animal scraps!) in the compost pile when out jump not one but TWO rats! Yikes! Now it was time to do something.
I researched on the web to see what could be done – seems the best and only way is the bait boxes you see around. I called the city to see what they could do about it. Inspector Turner told me the city hires a contractor to maintain the boxes and that they check them once a month. He gave me the name of the company and I contacted them. They came out, looked around and said they could put a bait box in my yard for something like $50 set up fee and $30 a month (or maybe it was $80/$50). WAY too much for me.
A few more weeks went by and I noticed that the bait boxes in the alley looked like they hadn’t been touched in a long while. Out of curiousity I opened the one behind my house. Empty. No bait. An empty bait box is about as effective as giving an ice cube to an eskimo. I walked down the alley and checked the other bait boxes. ALL of them were empty and looked like they hadn’t been touched in months. I called Inspector Turner again.
I asked Inspector Turner how the city oversees the contractor. His response was that they go on the “honor system”. I then explained that I had checked all of the boxes in the alley, they were empty and looked like they hadn’t been checked in a long while. Perhaps this was the cause of our rat problem. He said possibly and also said that perhaps Giant is not maintaining their boxes. I then also told him that I had checked Giant’s boxes and all of them were baited and even had little punch cards to indicate when they had been baited (every month).
Without addressing the obvious – that the city is getting ripped off by a contractor who is not doing their job – Inspector Turner told me he would have them rebait the boxes in the morning and personally inspect them in the afternoon. I waited a day or two and then checked and sure enough, they were all rebaited.
Yesterday, two weeks after this all, I checked the boxes and we must have a lot of hungry rats because all of the boxes are once again empty. I called Inspector Turner again (we’re fast becoming old friends) and he said he’ll have them rebait the boxes tomorrow.
I dunno but I suspect our rat problem would never have happened if the city contractor were doing their job.
If you have a bait box near you and want to see if it is really baited, you can very easily open the box with a flat head screwdriver. The top of the box has 4 slots in it – 2 parallel to the long side of the box and 2 perpendicular to the long side of the box. I have found with most boxes that all you need do is put the screwdriver in one of the parallel slots and pry back towards the rear of the box then repeat with the other parallel slot.
If the box is not baited, contact Inspector Turner at 703-838-4233 x121 or 703-838-4360. The city also has a website with this information.
Update: 3 Dec. 05
I verified today that the boxes had been rebaited. An added bonus for being a pain-in-the-butt is that the alley now has 7 boxes where previously there were only 5. Funny thing though, even though all the boxes have been rebaited, the one right behind my house is empty already! Looks like another call to Inspector Turner on Monday…
Update: 13 Mar. 06
I was talking with Pat, a city inspector this evening at the Meet and Greet and learned that the exterminator who has the city contract for maintaining the rat bait boxes is not paid a flat fee, they are paid by each rebaiting. So this raises 2 new issues – is the exterminator billing for baiting they are not doing? And, what constitutes a baiting? I noticed that the only time they visited our little alley since December was in late January and then they put very little bait in any of the boxes. I still smell a rat [pun intended!].