As gas fumes force it out of its underground home, it scurries -- disoriented -- through overgrown grass. But before it can make a break for freedom, the shovel comes down and WHAM!
Baltimore's growing rat population is minus one renegade rodent.
But it is a mere dent in what seems to Stephanie A. Brooks an infinite number of pests. Brooks directs the city's Rat Rubout Program. She says the 50 to 100 rat complaints that come in each day -- many from previously rat-free neighborhoods -- and reports from the field indicate the rat population has swelled this summer.
The rise in the number of rats -- along with freak storms, droughts, floods and various social ills -- has been blamed on El Nino, which brought Baltimore a mild winter. Rats are normally thinned out by freezing temperatures.
No one is sure how many rats are running loose in the city.
But the increase has overwhelmed the Rubout program. It now takes about a month for a Rubout truck and two pest-control workers to respond to a complaint. Worse, to be effective, workers say they need to revisit an area at least three times to keep rats away. The exterminators are falling behind.
Donald E. Brooks, one of 12 exterminators in the city's 25-year-old program, has been killing rodents for 18 years, and says, "They're getting a lot bolder than they used to be."
Stephanie Brooks, no relation, says callers report rats running in their yards, chewing wires in their cars, eating their neighbor's birdseed, stealing dog food, gnawing doors.
Even in the cleanest, wealthiest neighborhoods, the director says, plastic trash bags at the corner or spilled birdseed in the back yard will bring rats.
Who is responsible?
But who is responsible for keeping the critters at bay? Some callers to Rat Rubout say rats "belong to the city," but a city ordinance says pests are the responsibility of citizens.
The city provides Rat Rubout as a courtesy, Stephanie Brooks says. No matter how many rats munch on poison pellets, they will flourish if people don't clean up their yards and use metal garbage containers -- because one man's trash is 1,000 rats' chow.
"This is a people problem," Stephanie Brooks says, pointing to a pile of lumber behind a rowhouse. "The rats didn't pick this up and bring it here."
A recent visit to East Baltimore with Rat Rubout reveals a smorgasbord of rat delicacies -- crumbs in discarded bags of potato chips, soda bottles, rotting apples, an open can of yams, cheese curls and other leftovers -- flowing out of open trash cans and spread across yards and alleys.
