Alderman Wants to Stop Female Rats from Birthing Baby Rats

Chicago is full of rats. No, we're not talking about snitches and whistleblowers who help bring down thugs and put our governors and government workers in jail.

We're talking about the four-legged, whiskered vermin that roam our gutters and alleyways. One alderman worries the spring thaw will bring the rats out in force, and he wants to curb that by sterilizing Chicago's rodents.

“I was going down Lake Street in the 1500 block and saw a whole crew of them scurrying into buildings. I saw them on the West Side yesterday doing my drive-around. I was up in the Gold Coast area and saw them. When you have that number of sightings in a limited period of time, we’ve got a problem,” Ald. Bob Fioretti said in the Sun-Times Wednesday.

He wants to distribute a liquid rodent bait called ContraPest that's been used successfully in New York City to curb the rat population.

"The rat problem in our city is out of control," Fioretti said. "They carry diseases that negatively impact our communities. ... This is a quality-of-life issue that we should be dealing with more effectively in our city."

DNAInfo.com reports that Fioretti cited this fact — Animal Planet ranks Chicago as the world's fourth-worst city for rats.