oh rats i didn't know i was on the air i'm sorry about that i'm joanna juva list senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and we could local belmont dot com and believe it or not today we're going to talk about rats thirty minutes talking about rats so stay tuned because this is going to be really good information i have two guests with me today wesley chin he's the director of belmont health department and his in turn brianna gray who is a grad student at boston you know the university studying public health with concentrations and environmental hazard assessment and infectious disease so how do you like being in bell not be an idea like your your internship so i or i love a really great really great but it turned into a little bit something different than what you originally thought right yes you you started you told me start in the summer as an internal and you were getting a lot of calls related to the topic of our discussion today rats and so wesley how did you decide ok we need be i just focus on this how did that  for a couple of years so how new is this problem in belmont what do you know about the history of rats about so rats are a natural part of the urban environment so as long as there have been people in belmont there of likely been rats the problem we've been tracking for the past three years because we've developed a database system with i t to compile the data and and tabulate some of the stats for us which has been really interesting right you want to tell us bruno like what your your findings were and i know you did a big presentation at the state house about your this became a project for you right yeah yeah getting all the calls them about and so we ended up so far this year we've had over one hundred complaints compared to last year which was about fifty so there's been quite an increase in the forty percent increase is that w i heard i think that was from the summer it was over the summer so i think where has it slowed down do you think i asked you this question wesley how many calls are you getting on on average a week can you say like a breakdown by that we are i mean getting calls every day is not a day goes by that you don't get a call right there's at least a call a day i mean it's really hard to know how many calls we're getting per week it depends on the weather and the time of year in general as the weather gets cooler the days get shorter in the past so the calls would slow down but the share they're still coming in at a pretty consistent pace seem an example they're nervous given the issues that have been going on the share so they'll say i think i might have rats there there's a hole in my garden for example can you tell me a little bit about what to look for  i want to ask you what do you think is the biggest culprit the biggest cause of the cause of the common links that you're seeing with people who are having red issues sure so is it is it related to composting rash i mean i not being stored properly and they're getting into that so it's been kind of a variety of all of those things so it's not one specific thing we actually have photos that you provided to us that we're going to be showing and talking about for our viewers to help educate them and i know that you've sent out a lot of educational material do you do you find that it's helping ok so we have what is what is this a photo op yeah so this was a shot it was a lot of clutter itself sometimes they want inspection of their property so we would schedule a time for us to go look at their property walk around with them point out any attractants they have for rats and then if we do see signs of burrows then we would tell them that they should hire a professional pos control operator to deal with the problem sometimes it's just i know i have burrows i have hiring pest control like what else can i do or you know what can my neighbors do to help so i just various is based on the call so let's say you're you could have a really well kept yard or we have some more pictures ok that's that's another wh to you tell your buddy what that is just trash so that's an example of improperly stored trash given the severity of the rat problem in town this year we strongly recommend people keep trash in trash bags but also in representin hers so metal trash bins are great for example that's just that somebody was compos that's a compost bin you know that shows that arrest chewed through the compost bin to access the material and also has tried to get under it to also get up into it somebody else was improperly stored stormtrooper and that's that's an example of a wrapper of what would you be looking for on your property are these holes that are approximately four to six inches in diameter and there tends to be a well worn path also leading up to the hole showing that to all those that burrows and those yeah those are the lot of red dots in one particular area yep which she said was the whole street area which is the blue dot at the bottom is the question square project yes that bradford  it is quite possible that the rats the increase in rat activities related to all the construction going on although we don't know for sure i say i don't know that there is a strong correlation to the construction project as much as the high density of rats sightings in that area may be related to the fact that it's a very populated part of town and there's a lot of three family apartment buildings  we've noticed on trash day trash isn't necessarily stored the way we would like to see so it's easy access for the rats and and we think it's just you know wherever you have easy access to food shelter and water you're going to find rats and it's if we can all do a better job storing our garbage in might hope really have a problem why do you think there was a problem at joey's park that led to it needing to be closed so we've seen pictures of joey's park and i've heard from people but there would often be overflowing trash cans and just food waste left around the park area and so yeah it just provides again great road at harvard conditions for them do you know how they discovered the rat it's basically they were calling a rat infestation underneath the play structures at joey's park so how was this to confidently identify them because on her property she had ridden burrows so they looked similar to her right and this happened in october right in the park has been closed for about a month visit it's likely that the park will be reopened to the public come monday coming so yeah by the time this airs people i may already be open but what are they gonna do as precautions to ensure this doesn't happen again so we're we're hoping and we're asking people to just be a little bit more careful about the way they handle their waste at the park it's a public space for us all to enjoy so we're hopeful  if you see something on the ground that shouldn't be you clean up after you know either yourself or somebody else they the staff and d p w they're at they're also cleaning but it's possible that if you know the problem continues one way to try to mitigate it would be to implement a carry and then carry out policy for trash ok something that the town might be considering but parks potentially park and they're also conducting assessments at other parks so we haven't heard anything yet but if you know if there's an issue they're definitely going to be on top of it what will happen in the winter well the rat activity you think decreas what do they do in the winter months so in general radek to the will slow down in the winter in the colder months of the year so we're really hopeful that we'll have a cold one winter as awful as that might sound for us but yeah they go they go underground they go they try to find a warm place today predawn or there they do but breeding slows down in the colder winter months so as we have a nice cold winter you know things should hopefully be better come springtime but because last winter was short and warmer they were able to get in an extra breeding cycle and i think that's a big part of why we're  population boom the share well why do you think rats have such a bad rep so historically rats have been associated with the carrying of and spread of disease and so it's something that we should all be very aware and cautious of they can spread diseases such as equalize the mela hanta virus through the urine of arat so it's more common so as long as as long as you don't drink stagnant puddles of water in the woods or outside for example you'll be fine  it's actually something that you can get a vaccine for your dog for right and speaking of dogs i heard that dog waste is also some people don't believe this but dog waste at tracks rats that's right yes so  solid animal waste of your household dog or cat will serve as a food source so it's recommended that people also scoop that up on a regular basis even if it's your own private property now belmont isn't the only town that's having an increase in rats right you're aware like tell tell our viewers what other towns have seen this same increase sure so a lot of our neighboring towns and communities have experienced  of each town and it would depend on the is there construction going on in all these other towns as well i mean this construction everywhere but i i think that belmont has had a lot of underground disruption i mean there's certainly construction going on here in beaumont but i again i think just in the greater boston area with that being so such a popular area to live there's just a lot of construction in general in the area what is what is you how do you eliminate the rat problem is there a way to actually eliminate it completely i mean if you were bathing with poisons and stuff i mean killing them off but then you have exposure secondary exposure to wildlife that you have to think about too so it's kind of a tough situation so maybe the humane treatment is also not helping to solve the problem but i can understand we don't want pets or children  too so i know that they were treating the rats at joey's park in a more humane way that's why they chose this particular pest control company want to tell everybody how they were how they were taking care of the problem without poison sure so the pest control company was using a product called rat gel rat out gel right yes and it it's it's active ingredients are garlic powder and pepper and so what they were doing was lining the entryways to each of the burrows with this gel and when the rats would go in and out it would get on into a bit of a frenzy and they would run out of the burrows and into each of the traps that had been set outside of the holes interesting this so the pest control  this this is how they do it to me how did you believe that that actually well that they would send us updates and reports and to date they've called over twenty rats over twenty yeah and they believe they have caught them all d still play in the park but why is that not a good thing well again i mean you want to minimize human contact with rats and we're talking about children that's a vulnerable population so they weren't necessarily out during the day while the kids were playing in the park right they were kind of underground so yeah i mean i think when you're dealing with a population like children it's better to err on the side of caution  yeah i think they made the right to say i heard joey's park has had rat issues in the past do you know anything about that but it's not the first time joey's park has had a radish but yes so i mean that would be a little bit before a time here in belmont right i'm guessing it's probably more a food source that would attract them yeah it's interesting though because there are so many other parks in belmont you know that's a popular one but they all have the same issue with trash right that you know joey's park is the one that we seem to get the most calls on something about the wind brooke neighborhood and maybe the does it have anything to do with the body of water that they're near it's totally possible yeah why is that they need a food water shelter as the three main things that rats look for so that would be an easy water source for them in that area people tell me that they've seen rat swimming they have they've things that you'll be working on well where for now we're really just focused on on more read a g case and just giving people tips on what they can do to make their property less attractive to rats but why don't we talk about some of those those t so so pretty actually does a lot of education to our residents yes so really just you know making sure like we said their trash is covered and properly stored we really say not to feed the food water shelter for the rounds but you know anyone can call us any time for any sort of tips we're happy to help what about what about rats in relation to other other wildlife rodents like squirrels i mean they are kind of related aren't they rats and mice and squirrels like what can you tell people that might not know a lot about rats well i think in general lation to the other species i think in general people are ok with the rats i mean with the i'm sorry with the might some of the squirrels on their property but it's the rats yeah but why is that again why do rats have such a bad rep well it's exactly it's their reputation don't those other animals also carry disease and i do know some people who actually have pet rats but you wouldn't want to make one of these rats your pet i'm just saying he's a pet people that might have got it at a pet store those are different kind of rats right because they were born and bred a certain way and not exposed to all those yeah there's this domestic rats domestic i'm sorry that you didn't get to bring your skeleton of the rat is that a real skeleton that so yeah again you know the health departments here to help in any way that they can if if you see a rat please give us a call we're happy to you know come out and inspect your property and provide some guidance on what you can do but you know at the end of the day if you keep your your your yard nice and clean with that any access to food water shelter should have a problem and if you find you do c or or call a professional to come help you for sure what if it's your neighbor's yard that they think what if you you you see a neighbor's yard that you think might be causing the problem but they're not calling like you can just call in and you know want to get bad blood between neighbors but should they really have to share you can you can definitely call us if you're concerned about a neighbor i mean our our recommendation is always you know to promote neighbor good harmony you should try to talk to your neighbor first  again we're always happy to lend a hand if we can it's interesting so this other this map also shows i think this is the beach street area right now so why do you think there's a lot of rats in that area i think that the beach treated areas one of the more densely populated areas and town there are a number of rental units there triple decker and just with more people you have more trash so right is one of them because this one whole side of the map here doesn't have any red dots so what does that mean so i think up there you know that's that's the hill and you just have more land and space so people don't live close together  and that maybe when we do get the automated trash barrels that might help because then the trash would be in a sealed barrel but i don't know if that will solve the problem completely sounds like there's there's more work to be done but more studying more research and that's why we have we have the like brianna so keep me posted ok and i'll keep my readers posted thank you for tuning in visit  local belmont dot com for all your news about belmont or pick up a copy of the latest edition of the bill want to listen hell that comes out every thursday thank you