The city of Boston has stopped using traditional rat poison in its on-going battle with a rodent population that’s running rampant.
City leaders discussed the latest steps that’ve been taken to address the “number one complaint” across Boston at a city council hearing on Monday.
Officials are currently relying on carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide treatments to suffocate rats in their burrows.
According to Boston ISD, anticoagulant rodenticides, which can hurt pets and wild animals, are now only being used in city sewers.
“We need to make progress. We’re not doing it right now,” Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn told Boston 25 News. “We need to reassess our plan on pest control.”
During Monday’s hearing, city officials said they aren’t convinced that last year’s rat birth control pilot program produced concrete results.
Research on the use of pellets that suppress the fertility of rodents is still underway and being monitored by city leaders.
Boston 25 News spoke with residents in several Boston neighborhoods who said they’d like to see a plan that actually leads to a noticeable decrease in daily rat sightings.
“They’re everywhere. It’s sort of like whack amole,” said Bay Village resident Nancy Morrisroe. “They’re getting aggressive. They come out during the day.”
Morrisroe said pesky rats sometimes gain access to homes in Bay Village that are built on dirt and landfill.
She and other neighbors have rat proofed their properties to address the issue.
“That is the most disturbing thing to actually be sitting watching television, and you see something out of the corner of your eye and realize that it’s a rat,” she said.
311 complaints about rodents continue to run rampant across Boston neighborhoods.
Boston 25 News reported on the problem of rats chewing through car wires in Boston’s South End earlier this year.
Neighbors said that they’re still dealing with that same nuisance.
“Our car wouldn’t start one day, and when we called AAA, they said it appeared rats chewed the wiring in our car,” said South End resident Norin Razzaque. “They’re so bold. They run around like they own the place.”
The city has been working with MIT to develop a model to predict and map rat activity around Boston.
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