Articles: rats

On Chicago Marathon morning I thought about the story of the tortoise and the hare – so we spoke about tortoises and hares (rabbits) HERE on WGN Radio Steve Dale Dale’s Pet World.  My guest, Dr. Byron De la Navarre, past President of the Association of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians and is considered a world expert…

In a collaborative effort, several investigators from The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine as well as MedVet Chicago partnered on the paper, “The Descriptive and Spatio-Temporal Analyses of 45 Canine Leptospirosis Cases from Chicago, 2015-2018.” Amanda Smith, PhD Candidate at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine is the lead investigator on the project,…

The World Health Organization (WHO) listed “vaccine hesitancy” — defined as the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate, despite the availability of vaccines — among the top 10 health threats of 2019. Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways to avoid disease, preventing two to three million deaths annually, according to the organization. An additional 1.5…

Leptospirosis doesn’t just go away because the weather gets a bit cooler. In fact, in places, there may be more of it. Lepto is a water born bacterial infection spread by many mammals, most prominently rats. That’s why Lepto is sometimes called “rat fever” or “rodent fever.” Infected animals may or may not show symptoms.…

Rats don’t like dog feces. That’s the truth. I am tired of public officials and others who blame dogs owners not picking up for the rat problem. We were at a city festival over the weekend, and they were giving out signs which blamed dogs for the city’s rat problem. That simply is untrue! Of…

Rats don’t eat dog poop, despite what some public officials in Chicago insist. In fact, if all the dog poop from Chicago were instantly removed, the impact on rats numbers would be about zero. New signage in Chicago offers other ways to decrease the free buffets we’re offering rats. I describe here how to make…

Chicago, for the third year straight, topped Orkin’s rattiest city list. And, yet again, some Chicago public officials came out swinging against dog owners. The assertion is that city rats get fat eating dog poop. The only problem with these continued claims is that they are not true. Rats do not particularly like to eat…

“Mr. Newsman” Dave Schwaney and I begin my show, Steve Dale’s Pet World with his Schwaney song, as always. From there, listen HERE, as I talk to him about why I was recently in New York City, including introducing a movie at the famed Lincoln Center in New York City. The movie is a short…

For the third straight year, Chicago tops Orkin’s list of the rattiest cities in the U.S. You’d think that rats would freeze to death living in many of the cities listed, including the Windy City, Green Bay (number 50), Minneapolis/St. Paul (number 12), Detroit (number 7), and others. Apparently rats are survivors. Also, as far as…

The Great Plague lasted 18 months, from 1665 to 1666. Initially, the wise men of the day, particularly clergy, blamed sorcery, witchcraft, and their cats—especially black cats. But what really caused the plague? It was fleas. Fleas that lived on rats. And, of course, killing the cats who ate the rats only made matters worse.* People…