Will the city or county animal services help me with a rat issue?

Many times in the course of history terrible plagues wreaked havoc across large land masses, literally killing millions of people. In virtually every one of these cases the rat was the primary carrier of the illnesses that spread and caused these catastrophes. These animals are vile creatures that live in such large numbers where human beings exist that it is easy to see why they are able to spread diseases so quickly. Even if several million of them were killed in a large land mass, like Western Europe, there would be ten times more that survived.



These animals carry a large number of parasites and disease, maybe more than any other animal on earth. They can be very dangerous for humans to come in contact with them, and should be avoided at all costs, unless you are wearing gloves and a mask to protect your airway.

With this in mind you would think that animal control services would be quick to help if you had a rat problem in your home. Since these animals are so hazardous and have the potential to spread disease over such a large area, it would seem logical that your county or city would want to do all they could to keep these animals out of their communities. That is the way it would seem, but that is not reality.

First of all consider that there are probably twenty times more rats than there are in any community you may find. Even in the New York City area, where there are an estimated 24 million people, there are probably 300 million rats or more living in that same area. That may seem absurd, but these animals live in the sewers, on the street, in the walls of buildings, and virtually everywhere else you can imagine. It is just not possible to get rid of them all.

Neither should they be getting rid of them. The ecosystem needs these animals, even if we don’t like to admit to this. Rats rid an area of certain other creatures, and many other animals eat rats. This means that riding a place of these creatures may mean wiping out another species of animal. The only time that animal control may help you is if there is a clear disease that they should be concerned about. If a large number of rats in a colony appear sick then they may come out to ensure that the illness does not spread.

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