It couldn’t possibly be due to San Fran being an open sewer full of people literally shitting and peeing in the streets, right? Or all the trash, right? Or businesses fleeing the city, leaving lots of unused buildings perfect for rats to breed in, right? No, it has to be a slight increase in global temperatures over the course of 170 years
‘Infinite sea of rats’: SF’s rodent population may be exploding
The city’s climate change-driven surge in rodents puts it second only to — please don’t laugh — D.C.
Rikki Ercoli has lived off San Francisco’s Market Street for 19 years, but he never saw rats until this year. At night, he says, he glances through his bay windows and sees them scurrying. And they’re not small ones, either.
“They’re pretty fat,” Ercoli, a photographer, said. “The trash room is directly below me, and I see them running out in packs of two and three.”
Of all the urban woes that keep San Francisco residents up at night — an owner move-in eviction, losing your homeowners insurance, the Big One — few afflictions match the mundane horror of a rat infestation. Their size startles us. They make a mess. They’re embarrassing.
And their numbers may be increasing — dramatically.
Are they increasing or not? They’re writing a fearmongering article without knowing if the rat population is increasing or not.
A study of 16 major cities (14 in North America, plus Amsterdam and Tokyo) over an average of 12 years published in Science Advances last month found that climate change is fueling a hemisphere-wide population boom for Rattus rattus, or the black rat. In the case of San Francisco, the population has grown by more than 10% — more than every other city in the study besides Washington, D.C.
Yeah, that study is full of lots of mights, ifs, maybes, we thinks, based on computer models and shoddy statistics.
Jokes about a rodent infestation in the nation’s capital aside, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on here in San Francisco. Rodolfo Dirzoa, a professor of environmental science at Stanford University who was not involved in the original study, said the findings are consistent with what he sees happening in the Bay Area. He said another point in the study is hugely significant: the increasing loss of vegetation.
“The reduction of population regulation associated with the loss or decline of natural biodiversity,” Dirzo wrote via email, “creates an ideal synergy for rat proliferation.”
Well, maybe don’t cut all the trees and shrubs down. Heck, there are plenty of empty buildings that could be turned into residential.
Fragmented ecosystems give rats opportunities to thrive, causing what Dirzo calls a “rodentation” of the city. Exterminator Maria Talacona, co-founder of the Bay Area’s Mighty Men Pest Control, is all too familiar with it. “We’re definitely seeing an increase in rodent activity anywhere buildings are extremely close together,” Talacona said, adding that this living nightmare is “my favorite thing to talk about.”
An inability to walk around all four sides of a building creates spaces where humans can’t leave their scent behind. That signals that a place is safe to burrow and build nests. “It gives them a very strong advantage, because we can’t get to them.” The other pathway for an infestation is garage doors. If they don’t close tightly, rats can get inside.
So, it is a manmade issue, but, nothing to do with climate doom
Climate change, Talacona added, is very likely messing with local rats’ predators, such as raptors and garter snakes. (The carnivorous California squirrels that made headlines late last year seem content to eat only voles … for now.)
Or, it could be due to paving everything and biosphere loss. Anyhow, here we go
However, Talacona said that in her experience, the other reason for the exploding rat population is the state’s new approach to rat poison. To protect the health of birds, mountain lions, and other animals that may consume poisoned rats, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2024 that prohibited the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, leading the Center for Biological Diversity to crow that “California OKs strongest rat poison restrictions in nation.” Talacona likened that approach to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
And there we go, it’s damned near impossible to do anything to stop the rats from breeding.
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And all those cats that belong to single women are too well fed to bother chasing rats. If only there were a popular toy that in the hands of rambunctious youths could be used to annihilate the rat population whenever it pokes it’s head up. Alas, such a wonderous invention does not exist nor would any sane civilization put such a weapon in the hands of a child. We all know what killing animals leads to. Best just to learn to live with the rats. Maybe a federal program to feed them so that they are less attracted to human foods.
We need John Wayne.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2130518946967872
Trump gave a speech in which he was telling Europe and especially Germany that they were becoming too dependent upon Russia for oil and natural gas and it was gonna bite them in the ass. People in the audience were giggling and laughing at Trump.
Today, they are not laughing and have realized how right Trump was. Germany is now trying to sell abandoned VW plants to China so China can make cheap cars in Germany to avoid tariffs and own the EU as well.
Vance gave a speech in Munich in which he chastised the EU for its lack of democracy while pretending to defend democracy with the USA’s money. The same people were giggling and laughing at Vance in the audience.
Now, the EU is scrambling after Headset(AI’s name for Hegseth and Vance’s speech), in which Trump basically told the EU, “You need to defend yourselves. You need to fix your own problems. ” The USA has China to deal with, which has declared it intends to fight the USA in a war shortly for world domination.
Zelenskyy noted that the EU has 82 brigades, and Ukraine accounts for 110, while Russia fields 220 brigades. The president used these figures to support his thesis that Europe needs to substantially expand its defense spending to deter and contain the Russian threat.
“There are 82 real brigades in Europe—I talked to senators today—and we have 110,” said Zelenskyy.
“Even together, we cannot compare with the Russian army. Therefore, if we are talking about security guarantees, we must find money for a larger army in Ukraine, and we must find ways to increase the production of arms and also expand the army in Europe.”
NOW you know the conundrum of EU’s emerging threat as the USA is forced to deal with a China that even NATO is borrowing money from. Europe is broke because it chose the path of socialism and arresting citizens for daring to criticize it’s politicians who are clueless.
NATO is scrambling after Trump said…Oh fuk you guys. You can’t even field a new brigade without jumping through hoops for a year. It’s time you get a backbone and defend yourselves.
Because folks, If China takes on the USA in the Pacific I guarantee you NATO will send 2 men and a boy and only the UK will manage to sorte a dozen or so ships which they are now talking about eliminating because they can’t afford to project power to the Pacific amidst their lunacy with Ukraine.
NATO has gotten itself into its own Afghanistan/Vietnam and has ZERO DOLLARS to fund or fight this proxy war. Meanwhile, Zelensky has his hand out begging for more money, or he just might spill the beans on Biden/Obama and all the NATO politicians who have been and are making millions off of Ukraine’s Mafia-style government.
Europe isn’t at war. They have no natural enemies. If they just stop trying to pick a fight with Russia, they don’t even need to increase their defense spending. There is no one they need to defend themselves from.