Restaurants, and even some grocery stores, have closed or limited their operations all over America. Millions of citizens remain indoors to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus. No running businesses, and nobody eating out, means no more garbage in the dumpsters – rodents’ primary source of food.
Bobby Corrigan, an urban rodentologist, who works as a consultant for several city health departments and businesses, such as shopping malls and airports, told NBC News:
A restaurant all of a sudden closes now, which has happened by the thousands in not just New York City but coast to coast and around the world, and those rats that were living by that restaurant, someplace nearby, and perhaps for decades having generations of rats that depended on that restaurant food, well, life is no longer working for them, and they only have a couple of choices.
Those choices include rat battles, cannibalism, and even infanticide. Corrigan continued:
It’s just like we’ve seen in the history of mankind, where people try to take over lands and they come in with militaries and armies and fight to the death, literally, for who’s going to conquer that land. And that’s what happens with rats. A new ‘army’ of rats come in, and whichever army has the strongest rats is going to conquer that area.
When one rat army triumphs over another, it won’t just move into its newly dominated territory, it will eat its opponents as well. Corrigan said:
They’re mammals just like you and I. And so when you’re really, really hungry, you’re not going to act the same — you’re going to act very bad, usually. So, these rats are fighting with one another, now the adults are killing the young in the nest and cannibalizing the pups.
Usually, the rats run along the dark corners, leaving the open streets to vehicles and sidewalks for people. Now, with stay-at-home orders imposed, the rodents are getting unprecedented access to city streets, and sightings of them roaming freely have increased. In one video from the French Quarter in New Orleans, a swarm of rats takes over the streets, desperately seeking food.
Louisiana’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, said at a news conference:
What we have seen is these practices are driving our rodents crazy. And what rodents do, they will find food, and they will find water. That puts our street homeless in dire, dire straits. And that’s why I’m so laser-focused on it right now.
However, Corrigan says there’s no need to panic. He said:
There’s no one behavior that’s going to fit all. This is not going to be a case where all of a sudden the rats are doing invasions everywhere, and it’s not going to be exactly as we saw on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Rats are designed to smell molecules of anything that’s food-related. They follow those food molecules like heat-seeking missiles — and eventually, you know they end up where those molecules are originating.
So, as long as you keep your space clean without food lying about, and manage your garbage well, you shouldn’t have an issue. Corrigan says you might see the animals in the streets naturally, but not to worry. Many cities are planning intensive pest control missions to manage the rodent populations.
