Metro Vancouver pest control company seeing uptick in rat-related calls
Posted July 22, 2019 12:06 pm.
Last Updated July 22, 2019 12:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – They’re always looking for your leftovers, can be a major nuisance, and at least one pest control company in Metro Vancouver says it’s been dealing with more rats recently.
It’s the time of year when we tend to see more of the rodents out and about, but Westside Pest Control says it saw about a 20 per cent increase in the number of calls around Metro Vancouver in June compared with the same month last year.
“One of the things that’s happened in the last few years is we’ve had some really cold winters and some really hot and dry summers, and even spring,” company president Mike Londry explains. “Rodents, like most mammals, need as much warmth as they can get but they also need as much water as they can get.
“A bit warmer weather in the wintertime and not too hot and dry in the summer makes for happy rodents,” he says.
While he notes his business has expanded, Londry doesn’t think that wouldn’t account for all of the increase.
Jamie Kiffiak, owner of Tri-Cities Pest Detective, says the weather does plays a big part.
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“There is certainly a seasonality to the population of the rodents. In colder and wetter months, they must find shelter or they’ll die from exposure. In spring or summer months, when temperatures rise, they can camp out under the stars and there are more readily available food sources such as people’s gardens and eventually blackberries. That allows the population to take off very quickly,” he says. “Rodents can have a litter each month of up to a dozen, and within two to three months the rodents have sexually matured and they’re able to reproduce. So very quickly you can have a population boom.”
Kiffiak adds his company is having a fairly typical summer.
Joseph Gabara, owner of Green Valley and Vancouver Pest Control, says every year is about the same for his company, but rats are a consistent problem.
“It’s usually areas with new construction – they’ve dug up all these sites where the rats had burrows, and obviously you’re going to see a bigger increase. We’re never going to eradicate the rats in Vancouver – it’s just a maintenance thing, they breed so quickly.”
All the pest control companies NEWS 1130 spoke with recommend managing the rodents’ scavenged food sources, like bird feeders and compost bins.
