A Growing Rat Problem Is Probably Your Fault

See, the problem couldn’t be caused by unsanitary conditions in Democrat run cities, nope, it has to be due to you driving a fossil fueled vehicle and eating meat

Hearing more about rats? Climate change could be to blame.

Rats! New York residents have long had a toxic neighborly relationship with the notorious rodents, and in the city of Ithaca the pest problems seem to be getting more noticeable.

While city and county officials say there has not been a significant increase in reports of rodents, anecdotes traveling via word-of-mouth and online on platforms like Nextdoor claim there has been a rise in rat encounters locally. A few residents have shared hair-raising stories of rodents scurrying through apartments in Ithaca without much sense of what to blame, particularly as the weather cooled in late summer.

But the seasonal change didn’t bring as much cold weather as it typically would. One local expert said the 50-degree days Ithaca saw as late as mid-November this year may have something to do with the seeming uptick.

In Ithaca, warming winters improve rats’ survivability through the cold months, leading to higher reproductive rates in the spring, said Matt Frye, a rodent and structural pest specialist for Cornell University. Frye works with the pest management industry as well as state and federal regulators to address pest problems in or around buildings.

“If we have warmer winters, we have better survival of rat populations through the winter, which means more individuals that are around in the spring, when they really have a peak of reproduction,” Frye said.

See? Your fault. Even though this has happened numerous times during the Holocene.

Temperatures and climate play a role, but there are other factors at play as well. An abundance of food sources can also attract rodents — typically in the form of mismanaged waste or poorly secured animal food, especially in agricultural settings.

“Rats are opportunistic omnivores, which means they take advantage of whatever they can find,” Frye said.

So, basically garbage in the streets. Nope, still your fault.

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