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  • Hacker News
  • Lots of rodents in Alberta. The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice. We need more bullsnakes.
    by BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
  • Time to flip the Samuel Jackson quote upside down, we need more mf'in snakes on the mf'in plane!
    by sellmesoap
  • > The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice

    They aren't doing a good job of keeping them "down" if they're on planes.

    by triceratops
  • Related:

    On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech, global war on rats (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17821534 - Aug 2018 (1 comment)

    On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech war on rats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9540096 - May 2015 (32 comments)

    I thought there had been other threads about this but couldn't find them. Anyone?

    by dang
  • New York claims a small victory in 'forever war on rats' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42918425 - Feb 2025 (204 comments)

    Cats are no match for New York City's rats (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38333054 - Nov 2023 (77 comments)

    How rats became an inescapable part of city living - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413214 - Mar 2019 (52 comments)

    The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207172 - Feb 2019 (14 comments)

    Drones Help Rid Galapagos Island of Invasive Rats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078518 - Feb 2019 (58 comments)

    New Zealand’s War on Rats (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891549 - April 2018 (34 comments)

    New Zealand’s War on Rats Could Change the World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730337 - Nov 2017 (3 comments)

    by NaOH
  • We sure have a lot of gophers though. They are cuter but you should still treat them like rats, no touch or try to play with them. Lots of diseases...
    by swader999
  • So, even impossible things can be made possible if there's enough determination and political will.
    by stackedinserter
  • Is it your position that private pest control could not achieve the same or better result for at most the same cost?

    Are you an economic calculation problem denier?

    by gbacon
  • eliminate malaria from the continental US. Check.

    eliminate smallpox. Check.

    eliminate measles. Own goal.

    by forlorn_mammoth
  • Tom Scott did a video a few years ago about New Zealand's attempt to eliminate rats by 2050.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcp1BfPUeOc

    The program is actually called "Predator Free 2050" and also aims to eliminate possums and stoats. No mention is made of Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs.

    by staplung
  • >Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs

    Aren't they native?

    by tokai
  • There was a Joe Pera episode where they made a musical about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM.
    by johnsutor
  • One of the bonus features of the movie Ratatouille has a short video-game sequence about it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-2xD9ShhMZU
    by jp_sc
  • I learned all about this from Joe Pera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJSMm1qpM
    by grahamburger
  • See also this exploration from Strange Aeons: https://youtu.be/vMOMa-4D1yQ?si=t1uxfY1pEDh2a44Y
    by shawnz
  • The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat
    by virgil_disgr4ce
  • I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.
    by mig39
  • From Alberta, never saw a rat in my life until visiting BC...

    Gophers everywhere though.

    by dismalaf
  • They don’t spread Lyme yet
    by dyauspitr
  • They likely spread rocky mountain fever instead, if they are dog ticks like we have in Colorado.
    by sojournerc
  • > the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.

    this is out of date information unfortunately. With warming climate, the black-legged tick has spread into Alberta and samples have been found with the Lyme disease bacterium.

    https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/tick-lyme-diseas...

    by cmrdporcupine
  • Albertan here too. Can confirm no rats

    My friend got Lyme disease from a tick though so I can't agree with that part

    by bluefirebrand
  • I care about the Lyme more than the rats tbh. That is way more likely to fuck you up long term than anything a rat will bring in this day and age. We aren’t getting the black plague anymore.
    by kimos
  • Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve lived in Ontario (in cities and the country) and have never seen a rat here. I know they exist but it’s not like we’re inundated by them. Maybe some specific businesses have problems with them, but it’s not something you see every day.

    I also lived in Montreal and did see them there sometimes. This was always early morning when I was out running - did not see them in Toronto, Ottawa, etc under similar conditions.

    Edit based on reading some other comments: I have seen lots of coyotes and foxes so maybe that explains fewer rats. I know Montreal has coyotes but I’ve never seen them there and where I was there were also squirrels everywhere suggesting fewer predators.

    by andy99
  • A correction:

    "One mayor refused to cooperate because he thought the program was a distraction cooked up by the ruling United Conservative Party."

    The UCP was established in 2017 and has no relation to the Social Credit Party that controlled Alberta's legislature during the time period being spoken of.

    by beloch
  • Saying "no relation" is almost stretching it a bit. I kinda give hats off to someone for the slipup. It's not the same legal entity but there's a continuous ideological (and even personal) connection going all the way back.

    The way I see it ... Peter Lougheed through Getty and (arguably Stelmach era) was a bit of a brief interruption. His urban, pragmatic PCs pushed the older rural, evangelical Socreds out of power in the 70s.. but that populist movement just went briefly into a (vaguely) outsider status, organized through Alberta Report, etc got into Klein's cabinet, found a national voice in Preston Manning's Reform Party, and returned provincially via the Wildrose Party, and finally triumphally recaptured the province under the banner of the UCP

    So not legally the same part, but frankly just really the same minus all the weird fixation on currencies, banks, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (... so far!)

    All of this off topic from rats. (Maybe?)

    by cmrdporcupine
  • > But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.

    Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!

    by dan353hehe
  • The dose makes the poison. Warfarin is prescribed as a blood thinner for humans.
    by _whiteCaps_