Yesterday, the Chronicle posted a story from Bill Murphy entitled “Part of downtown being plagued by rats.”
He’s not referring to our elected officials. Here’s an excerpt:
As downtown’s nightlife grows and residents move into loft apartments, the city is confronting a problem that bedevils all densely populated areas — the difficulty of wiping out rodents.
Beautiful, shady courtyards and attractive restaurant patios don’t seem as inviting when visitors are a wee bit concerned that something not very nice at all might be scurrying by.
The county has vowed to tackle the problem around the administration building, the city has added rat bait stations in the area around George R. Brown Convention Center and owners of a private park near the center have hired an exterminator.
Is the rat population growing downtown? “I have seen a slight increase in rats around county buildings,” said Marc Burr, a county employee who oversees pest control contracts.
Kathy Barton, spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department, and other city officials say complaints have not increased and they have no evidence of an uptick in rat numbers. But the city does not systematically track such matters.
“We have been fairly limited in our population,” said Bob Eury, director of the Downtown Management District. “I don’t think we have ever had an infestation.”
No one questions, however, that rats are a problem in the courtyard between Fannin and Main outside the county administration building. Employees have been complaining about them for several months.
Perhaps one solution would be to arm the Downtown Jaywalking Revenue Stream patrols and the METRO Elite Counterterror units with rat poison?
PREVIOUSLY: The Bill White Vermin And Solid Waste Memorial Park.
