The onset of cool temperatures may have played a role in fewer rat sightings around Borderland.
Jerry Jensen, International Falls fire chief and housing inspector, said he’s not seen any rats or received any phone calls from area homeowners about rats recently.
“I don’t see it as an issue, but I do have a concern,” said Jensen Monday.
In late July and August, Jensen received phone calls from a few city residents who reported seeing and trapping rats.
Jensen confirmed that one homeowner in the city trapped five rats in his yard.
An Aug. 8 story in The Journal prompted more calls to Jensen, with several coming from outside the city limits.
“We got quite a few calls here from people who were seeing and actually trapping rats,” said Jensen Monday. “There were probably maybe a half dozen to a dozen actually trapped.”
Jensen said he provided snap-type killing traps to area residents who asked, but said some rejected the idea because they were concerned that the traps would kill other, more favorable rodents including chipmunks and squirrels.
Jensen said he’s still unsure what caused what appears to be a spike in the number of rats locally.
“There is a lot of speculation about it,” he said. “Some felt they were coming from the construction (at the sewer treatment) plant, but I really don’t believe that.”
Jensen, who lives adjacent to the sewer plant construction, said he was paying especially close attention to the critters in the vicinity of his home and the treatment plant. “I only saw chipmunks and squirrels, there,” he said.
In August, Tim “Chopper” McBride, executive director of the North Koochiching Area Sanitary District and Falls mayor, said staff had been watching for rats and not found evidence of rats at the plant.
“This is a strange situation and we’re not sure what is going into it,” said McBride in August. “It is being worked on and a process is ongoing. But we do not believe that the situation happening is a result of the sewer project.”
Jensen said a trapped rat was brought to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources staff, who said they believed it was a Norway rat (rattus norvegicus), a nonnative species with a long, scaly, nearly hairless tail. The species is also known as the common, sewer, brown, wharf, or water rat.
Jensen said other theories about the increase in numbers of rats involve rats traveling on train cars and getting off at Borderland.
“I don’t think we’ll see too many now, as we get the snow,” said Jensen.
And while Jensen said he’s previously heard complaints about rats in the city, he’d never seen one or heard of anyone trapping one before this summer.
“It was amazing we had them,” he said, noting that residences where rats were being seen were not messy. However, he said the city’s fight on blight, a campaign to clean up residences with long grass, vacant structures and junk cars, should help to eliminate places where rats may live.
Jensen said calls about blighted residences often include concern about the possibility of rats. “But I have never gone to a call and checked out the property and actually saw a rat,” he said.
He also noted that firefighters elsewhere tell of seeing rats running from a burning building. “But I’ve never seen that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jensen encouraged anyone who sees a rat or traps one to contact him at the Falls Fire Department at 283-2929.
“They can call us about getting traps,” he said. “If people see them we want to get on top of it right away.”
Jensen said his wife, Mary Lou, aware that her husband was on rat patrol in the late summer, left him a life-sized stuffed rat on his truck one morning.
“She thought it was hilarious,” he said. “She got a rise out of me, all right.”
