Chicago Named Rattiest U.S. City, Despite Efforts to Lose This Rat Race

CHICAGO, IL — The city's rat problem is no secret to Chicagoans, but it's not something anyone wants the rest of the country to be alerted about. Unfortunately, a national pest control service's ignominious ranking is shining a spotlight on the city's troubles with rodent infestations.

Chicago has been named the rattiest city in the United States by Orkin, which released its list of the top 50 metropolitan "rat nests," so to speak, around the country Monday. The rankings by the Atlanta-based company were determined by the amount of rat and mice treatments — residential and commercial — it performed between Oct. 1, 2015, and Sept. 30, 2016.

This is the second time the city has been ranked No. 1 by the extermination service when it comes to its rodent population. Chicago occupied the top spot of Orkin's list in 2014, the last time the company put together a ranking.

The other cities rounding out the top five of the 2016 list included, in respective order:

• New York City
• Washington, D.C.
• Los Angeles
• the Bay Area in northern California (San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose)

Detroit (No. 9), Indianapolis (19), Milwaukee (23) and Madison, Wisconsin (49), are Midwestern cities near Chicago that also were in the top 50.

Chicago — and especially the North Side — isn't the only U.S. city trying to figure out what to do with these furry pests. Many of the cities at the top of Orkin's list have seen spikes in their rat populations, according to USA Today.

City officials have been critical of Orkin's list — and Chicago's position on it — in the past. In October of 2015, Commissioner Charles Williams, head of the Department of Streets and Sanitation, said he thought the rodent extermination service was being self-serving by compiling such a ranking and that it was irresponsible for media outlets to do stories on it, according to DNAinfo.com.

More on Chicago's Rat Problem on Patch:

• Chicago's Rats Love the North Side
  
• Feral Cats Used to Control Rat Problem on North Side
  
• Meet the Cool Cats Who Protect a Chicago Brewery From Rats
  
• Chicago's Rat Problem: How Do You Handle the City's Rodent Residents?

"Is this the worst city in the world for rodents? Absolutely not …," he told the news site last year. "All you can do is manage the rat population. You're not going to eradicate rats. They've been around longer than we have. And they've tolerated us, which is good. But we are going to do everything we can to manage them as well as we do … ."

Just last month Chicago began testing a possible weapon and tactic to its strategy when it comes to combatting rats. Williams and his department introduced a new pilot program that would use dry ice to help curb the population.

Treatments involve pouring spoonfuls of the extremely cold substance into rodent burrows and then covering the burrows, according to a city release about the initiative. The dry ice melts, becoming carbon dioxide, which suffocates the rats.

“Dry ice is an alternative that cities have been experimenting with and achieving tremendous success," Williams said in the release, which indicated that preliminary results showed a more-than-60 percent reduction in rats in the areas where dry ice was used. "And we are excited to evaluate its effectiveness here in Chicago to determine if it could be an added tool in our arsenal against rodents."

The pilot program has been rolled out in several city parks, as well as planter boxes along Fairbanks Court, Wabash and Chicago avenues, and State and Superior streets. Testing will run through late fall, weather permitting, and conclude spring of next year, when the program will be evaluated.

Residents also have come up with their own solutions to ridding rats from their neighborhoods. Feral cats have been used by some businesses to hunt down the unwelcomed, four-legged city dwellers. Chicagoans also offered their ideas on how to handle infestations in a recent Reddit thread that dealt with the problem.

Orkin provided its own tips to prevent pests from popping into people's homes as temperatures drop and "rodent season" kicks in:

• Check in and around the house for rodent droppings, burrows and rub marks along baseboards and walls.
• Check for and seal cracks and holes outside the house where rats and mice could get in.
• Install weather stripping around doors and other entryways.
• Seal food in plastic or metal rodent-proof containers, and clean up crumbs and spills quickly.
• Cut back trees and bushes to at least 3 feet away from the house, so rats and mice don't have a spot to jump on to the gutters, the roof or other places rodents could access.

A rat on a city street. (photo by Edal Anton Lefterov | Wikimedia Commons)

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