MALDEN, MASS. (WHDH) - Rats are increasingly pestering neighbors in Malden.
“They run around the day like they own the neighborhood,” said Ryan Newhall. “They’re huge, they’re like this big and I’m like man, oh man.”
Newhall lives close to the Malden River and said in the last few years he’s seen more rodents scurrying around his home.
“It’s a big problem. I didn’t know there were that many. You can hear them gnawing around, getting their food,” he said. ““My neighbor’s house, they come right in the basement, they come right in. They’ll find a way, if there is a way in they’ll figure out a way.”
For Malden resident Sheryl Moretti, the rats are more than just creepy. She said rats are wreaking havoc on her driveway.
“The rats are burrowing, making tunnels under your driveway,” she said she was told, “I’m numb… I was petrified. I didn’t want to park there.”
She spent $4,000 to replace her driveway and now wants the city to do more to curb the problem.
Nearly 100 other residents have complained about rats on the city’s online reporting system this year. Malden neighbors complained of dead rats on sidewalks, rats chewing through car wires and infesting homes.
Malden installed electric traps throughout the city which have caught and killed more than a thousand rats since January 2023.
Despite this measure, many residents say more must be done.
Malden is hardly alone in fighting against rodents, so for a better solution the city might not have to look too far.
Residents in Jamaica Plain have been feeding rats birth control. Feeders that resemble normal rat traps are filled with pellets that suppress the fertility of rodents. The birth control pellets called GoodBites are part of a pilot program that residents started with the company WISDOM Good Works. Over the past year, the number of rats has been cut by 60 percent.
“Reducing by 50-60% is really where we find that balance that they are no longer engaging in the human wildlife conflict, they are no longer a nuisance, they are no longer getting into your garbage cans… at that point it can really be a reduction that can be claimed as a win,” explained WISDOM Good Works director of operations Alaina Gonzalez-White.
Gonzalez-White explained the pellets are completely harmless to other animals and the environment unlike rat poison.
“When you are pouring poison into our environment you are affecting not only the intended target but everything else that lives in that ecosystem,” she said.
The ugly consequences of rodenticide made headlines in Boston in 2023 when a poisoned owl was bleeding at Faneuil Hall before being rescued.
Many local pet owners have also pushed for a decrease in the use of rat poison after their pets consumed it and died.
Gonzalez-White said while the birth control pellets are better for the environment it doesn’t offer the short-term impact that rat poison does. However, over time the pellets will have a better sustained impact.
“While you might see an immediate dip in the sheer numbers, the ones you don’t capture are going to continue to breed. They are going to continue to multiply and you are going to have an inevitable rebound effect. By utilizing fertility control, which in my opinion is the golden key, you are taking a more proactive approach to long-term suppression,” she said.
Lauren Ockene is one of the JP residents that has been part of the pilot program.
She’s lived in the area for three decades. She used to have a rat burrow in her yard and see rodents constantly around the neighborhood.
“We used a lot of things to try to get rid of them. I wouldn’t use poison but we used snap traps…setting them up at dark and then retrieving them at dawn and dealing with the dead rat. There were close to 30 dead rats that I killed and dealt with that way,” Ockene remembered.
Now she’s has three WISDOM Good Works feeders in her yard.
“It’s really, really great,” Ockene said. “We don’t see them in our yard. We haven’t seen any in a lot of months and there is no sign of a burrow anymore which is huge.”
Some Boston officials want to use the rat birth control throughout the city.
“This is a remarkable success that we must learn from. Now it is time for our city to show leadership and scale this program up,” City Councilor Enrique Pepen said during a City Council meeting in July. Boston city councilors plan to hold a hearing about adding the pellets to the city’s Rodent Action Plan on Sept. 23.
Some Malden residents are pushing for the pellets too.
“I’m for anything and everything that will work because I don’t know how they do that but if they can get that started in Malden I think we should start doing that,” Newhall said.
Malden officials are skeptical rodent fertility will be the best solution because of its inability to kill rats immediately.
For now, the city is considering increasing the requirements for landlords to deal with rats, and fining residents for improper trash storage.
The Malden Health Department “has offered these amendments and is hoping the City Council will take them up in the course of business and enact them.”
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