Articles: rats

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…

Apparently, tourists in San Francisco don’t have enough to do. With cat cafes catching on throughout the country, here’s a twist: a rat cafe. Hopefully, the cats from the cat cafe won’t be visiting the rat cafe. This is no joke. Not sure how people will actually be eating when the rats abound; I’m guessing…

Is the Windy City about to be re-named the Rat City? It turns out the number of complaints regarding rats has increased 30 percent between November 2016 and February of 2017 compared to one year ago. This problem isn’t benign, ad the instances of leptospirosis (a bacterial infection transmitted by rats) is on the rise in…