Paris prepares warm Olympics welcome – except for rats

PARIS – While the Paris Olympics are set to be a festival of socialising and intermingling, city authorities are keen for visitors not to encounter any of the French capital’s notorious furry inhabitants.

Humorously portrayed in the hit animated film Ratatouille, Paris’ abundant rat population is no joke for residents – and could be an embarrassment as the Olympic spotlight falls on the city.

“All of the Olympic sites and celebration areas were analysed (for rats) before the Games,” Deputy Mayor Anne-Claire Boux, who has responsibility for public health, told AFP.

As well as ordering deep cleaning to remove any food residue that might tempt the rats from their underground lairs, the mayor’s rodent specialists also worked to close up exit points from the sewers around the sites.

“Where there were areas with lots of rats, we put traps in place ahead of the Games,” Ms Boux continued, adding that both mechanical rat traps and chemical solutions were used to reduce the troublesome population.

The park behind the Eiffel Tower, where the beach volleyball is set to take place, and the Louvre gardens, where the Olympic cauldron is set to burn, are popular picnic spots – and previously rat infested.

“Ultimately, no one should aim to exterminate Paris’ rats, and they’re useful in maintaining the sewers,” she added. “The point is that they should stay in the sewers.”

Paris vermin are frequently drawn into a contemporary debate about cleanliness in the French capital.

A viral social media campaign in 2021 called #SaccageParis (#TrashedParis) led to residents posting pictures of overflowing bins, badly maintained street furniture or overgrown green spaces that hurt the city’s cultivated reputation for elegance.

Ahead of the Olympics, Paris’ boulevards and squares have been thoroughly spruced up, with many historic buildings given a makeover.

Ms Boux stressed that rat problems were first and foremost caused by food being left out on the ground, or from overflowing waste bins, many of which are being changed around Paris to new rat-proof versions.

“The most important thing is that the bins are sealed and closed,” she said. The city’s rodent exterminators – known as the “Smash” team – have also had an advisory role to the Paris organising committee, suggesting ways to design their sites to keep them clean and orderly.

Responsibility for waste removal and street cleaning will fall to the city’s 7,500-strong cleaning and collection teams, whose three-week strike in 2023 led to an estimated 10,000 tonnes of garbage pile up in the streets.

“I’m not at all worried (about rats). We deal with them,” said Deputy Mayor in charge of waste, Antoine Guillou. “On the contrary, the Games will help us show definitively that this idea that you run into lots of rats in Paris is false.” AFP