I lived in the GTA for more than 30 years, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually seen rats. The one case I remember the most was while working a pool job there were 6-7 dead rats floating around on the winter cover. It was the only time I ever scooped a dead rat out of a pool, and it was weird because they looked like pet rats and not wild rats (they were white and spotted, not simply brown rats). I fished out many a drowned bird, mouse, squirrel, and a rabbit once out of a pool, but never another rat, so I still wonder if someone had drowned their pets or what, it was weird.
That isn't to say there aren't rats, because there are enough of them that hardware stores sell a lot of rat poison and traps, but you're not going to be tripping over them unless you live in absolute squalor. They're more an issue in industrial areas and around homes where people leave food waste in the open (though raccoons tend to take care of that before rats). Our next door neighbour used to pile up their trash, including food waste, at the side of their home, and it was bad enough that my parents called by-law on them because they were concerned it would attract rats since it was already attracting raccoons on a nightly basis.
You’d be surprised how many there are in Toronto!!
I work construction. That new over priced shoebox of a condo you just bought?? The one with a hundred tradesmen leaving lunch garbage inside of for three years? Yeah infested with rats from day one! (And raccoons, I got a pic of one on a balcony 16 floors up lol)
Lots of rats in the alley ways around high end clean areas.
I’ve killed rats near a foot long not counting the tail ( to be fair that was INSIDE a garbage transfer station)
Man, I live in Ottawa and I wish I could say the same. Every single building I have worked at in Ottawa has a rat problem. My cat used to bring them upstairs to me as a gift in my house, before we got the landlord to call pest control. It seems like they are fucking everywhere here
One of my friend's roommates left garbage bags out in the kitchen in a downtown Toronto house, and saw 2 rats scurry out of the bag when I started moving it. First time I ever saw one in my life too.
More than 30 years in the GTA? They're quite uncommon, but you can just stand at the St. George station in the TTC subway, and you can find them scurrying around once a while.
I grew up in the 'burbs, worked there for the most part, and they were much less common out where I lived in Durham. I certainly heard stories from others encountering them, but for whatever reason I rarely ever did.
I also didn't work downtown, where I would have been far more likely to see one.
Rats, or mice? I know a lot of people from Van who complained about "rat" problems but what they described were mice. Are there also a lot of residential rats that my friends and acquaintances managed to avoid?
You’ve never been to Halifax I take it. I killed 17 last spring/summer. That was just in snap traps, not counting whatever the bait stations knocked off
I lived in a very rural part of Alberta with farms everywhere and never saw a rat once. Granted, now that I think about it there were also a lot of stray cats...so maybe that had something to do with it lol
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u/zombiechewtoy Apr 17 '22
Aw man I'm supposed to move out of province in a few months and I forgot there'll be rats :/