A serious rat problem in Paris.
 

I witnessed this issue over the holidays while visiting Paris. I thought I might post about it sooner, but then I hesitated, knowing how the Francofile-lovers would react.

Now, it's all over the media, reminding me of the awful stuff I witnessed. Paris has a serious rodent problem. They need to so something about it.

Just one example:
Paris dustmen film swarming plague of rats as city faces up to mass rodent infestation

I saw this video on TV too. All cities located on the water have to deal with rats but Paris has a more extreme problem. In Chicago a special rat patrol report phone nmber was posted in the alleys for residents to call in when rats were seen.
I wonder if the high water in the Seine is causing this problem to worsen?

Why you care about Francofile-lovers reaction ?

This is not news, there have Parisians there for centuries.

We weren't upset about it, but we were out late one night in August and walked past Notre Dame and saw several rats frolicing around a trash bin. Earlier the same night we saw a few running around the right bank, but we were right on the river at that point. I feel for the trash men.

Yikes. This makes me rethink the place I want to book on Ile San Louis because it's on the ground floor. I ignored my husband pointing out the rats last year when we walked by Notre Dame. I lalala'd him but kept stomping my feet as we walked. I'm not a fan of the rat. I even had a hard time watching Ratatouille. And fyi to the psychologist quoted, some of us don't like squirrels either.

I hate rats. I found one in my yard once, my neighbors were real trashy. I called the city about it. Mice are more a normal problem. I've had a few small mice in my house, but if I hate a rat, I'd freak out.

I would never book a ground floor apt, anyway, for security reasons and just not wanting everyone to be able to look in at me walking by. creepy Even for an apt that is in interior courtyard and only faces it (I was in such a building), everyone coming in at night and going through it to the staircase to their rooms could see you, if you had any window without real thick coverings.

it's Francophile, not file, I believe that is from the Greek philos, like bibliophile

"A serious rat problem in Paris."

Of course the rats in Paris are serious. They love to debate philosophy and the relative merits of various trash sources. Many feel that the amount of garbage available at 3 star places is tasty but too little quantity, for instance.

Those are by far the world’s most beautiful rats.

The first urban rat I saw was in Paris, in 1966 in the headlights of my car one night. I remember it fondly. But then I had a pet rat, Oscar, as a child so that may account for it.

Of course it is. Their spellcheck sucks. I thought this new place had an edit feature? Please don't tell me it's on a timer. If so, how stupid, juvenile, and controlling.

Egads, but NYC has a huge problem also. BTW, I do hospice care and one of my clients lives on the 6th floor of a very swanky oceanside apartment. The garbage shoot was out of business and if you had anything to dispose you took to the parking lot. They were cleaning out the bins where the shoot drops the garbage and the guy doing it was marking off how many dead rats had been killed the last three days. Over 300! I can only imagine the restaurant garbage beachside. Last Paris trip there was a garbage strike and between the flying rats and ground rats it was gross. I would not walk on the sidewalks. Ground floor or five floors up doesn't stop these critters. I am taking plastic zip locks for any leftover pastry or food we keep in the apartment. My freind was just there and said they were everywhere by the Eiffel tower. I hate them.

They need some cats.

As a human being, you are never more than 10 feet away from a rat. The planet can't be sanitized to your liking.

Sass, cats and some snakes. We never kill snakes here in Fl.

This isn't anything new. I remember posting 4-5 years ago, warning people about having picnics on the Champ du Mars because the rats were so rampant and bold one summer they were stealing people's picnics from under their noses.It's a big city. All big cities have rats. It may be worse because of the inondations of late. When I lived in Dupont Circle, a nice neighborhood in DC, there were swarms of rats every night in the alleyways behind our house. I agree, they are gross, but every city has them. You can do your very small part by not littering, but it won't make much of a dent, I'm afraid.

Don't forget the Ratatouille ride at Disneyland Paris.

Frankly, the current increase of rats is caused by the flooding of the Seine and numerous construction projects.

In my own street, I have to deal with mice from time to time due to various demolitions, but the mice do not come in from ground level. They scamper along the roofs and get into my apartment through the attic room. I have discovered that peanut butter is absolutely the best thing to put into mousetraps (suggested by a friend from New Orleans). I used to use grilled lardons, which are also good, but peanut butter is better.

Show me a city without rats.

I believe any city in Alberta qualifies.

Sure? Better not look too close...
Rats are distributed all over the globe, with the sole exception of the northernmost arctic regions and Antarctica.

Washington DC has a rat problem too.

It was new to me.

In my 30+ years in NYC, I've never seen anything like this. On my way to Notre Dame, Pont Louis Philippe was covered with rats, scurrying from one side to the other. There were so many, you could barely see any street. From a distance, it looked like the surface of the street was moving. When I finally realized what I was seeing, I thought I was caught on a Paul Thomas Anderson film set, and he was shooting another version of Magnolia. Wild.

I feel sorry for grocery stores and food vendors. Those rats get everywhere. A serious health hazard.

Btw, rats don't scare me. We dissected them in high school biology class. Still, I'd prefer they not take over a favorite city.

Something for Macron and Trump to discuss. I bet Trump’s rats are bigger.

I saw a dead rat in the street two minutes from my house yesterday. If they are stupid enough to let themselves be run over by cars, there must be a serious over-population.
This is an average quarter in a perfectly normal mid-size German city, by the way. No dump or dirthole.

They are everywhere.

I bet the reason no one is mentioning London in this admittedly unscientific roundup is the rise of urban foxes there. Humans create imbalances in nature, and then complain about the consequences.

Sometimes it's hard to get rid of them: https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...-massacre-1902

Hunting of rats on a TV programme called Engrenages (Sprial). Wikipedia IMBd is much better than the hunting of rats on NICS or CSI.
If you have missed it you can find the back catalogue online.;)

Worked in Paris for 4 years in the 1990s, and lived just outside in Le Vesinet.

Can't recall ever seeing a rat.....just lots of dog muck everywhere...

https://www.frenchasyoulikeit.com/ex...dogs-in-paris/

Yukkie.

Vienna has rats, too. In fact, there is even a "Rat"haus for them. :toj:

My teen daughter and I spent a week in NYC in a not-too-distant February, along with her Slovenian BFF (first time to the US). BFF was "thrilled" to see a rat while we were waiting for a subway; it was something she could check off her NYC list. Not kidding.

I have seen very few rats over the years and almost always only if I am out past 1 a.m. which is rather rare for me these days. However, a friend of mine did report seeing one of those rat swarms next to the Tour Saint Jacques last summer.

I don't know if any of you geezers have read Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sixth Extinction, but in it one of the world's top scientists is quoted as saying that when man dies off rats will take over the world.

So, start thinking of Planet of the Rats, not Planet of the Apes.

Anybody remember the films Willard and Ben??

Thin

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ticle27504057/

For all intents and purposes, Alberta is rat-free.

I’m pretty sure there are Alberta rats that are laughing in a bar somewhere. They’ve no doubt evolved and become better at hiding, ala the fantastic mr. Fox.

I’ve seen rats in the NYC subway. They’re usually out of sight, though. If I saw a swarm in Paris, I’d probably run screaming. Roommate in college had pet rats. I don’t even like them domesticated and bathed.

Looks like the River Seine is up to its bridges, breaking a few burst records. This BBC article mentions that the water is flooding rat nests. I guess that explains the swarms running for their lives.

In pictures: River Seine bursts banks in Paris - BBC News

A couple of years ago DH and I were exiting a subway in NYC when some lady started pointing at DH’s foot. There was a small rodent clinging to the cuff of his jeans. At the time I assumed it was a mouse, which was bad enough. But now, I am thinking it could have been a baby rat, which somehow just seems so much worse...

The first thing I thought of was Ratatouille when I was this thread. LOL Thankfully, my friend and I didn't see any when we were in Paris in October. Rats are every where and they are survivors. All you can do is beat them back as best you can.
It's not just cities either. My brother lives out in the countryside and stopped feeding the birds when he watched the rat parade to the feeder one evening. As stated, they are everywhere.

If they are hiding so well that they aren’t seen, I think we can all agree that Alberta does a better job than Paris.

And that is the point: Paris has a rat problem. By many accounts, it is a quite significant one. Authorities can either hide behind “every city has rats” (which probably isn’t true) or they can look to how Calgary and Edmonton attack the problem. I know which I’d choose.

Things I learned on Fodors:

Slow down!
JET LAG Jet Lag jet lag zzzzzzz ... don’t drive.
Rats are everywhere - shrug.

The biggest problem that Paris has is that as the most visited city in the world and people will jump on any excuse to trash it in the media, while often ignoring that the problem in the own place of residence is just as bad or worse.

How many times have we read "is it safe to go to Paris?" from people living in cities with ten or twenty times the crime rate.

Does Paris have rats? Yes, it does, just like everywhere else. Are they jumping into people's laps in the restaurants? Has anyone been bitten on the Eiffel Tower yet? Have any babies had their faces chewed off in their cribs? I've read about things like this in other places, but it never made a huge splash in the news.