Pest control firms make a killing from catching rats in Britain

LONDON • The rat was "quite a big one", rat catcher Colin Sims said with understatement, holding up a specimen measuring about 20cm in length, not counting its tail.

It is boom time for firms like his CHS Pest Control, which has seen calls to deal with rats jump 75 per cent since Britain first entered coronavirus lockdown a year ago.

The infestation in London and other cities is growing acute as rodents take advantage of empty offices and look for new food sources, with many eateries shut.

"It's a dirty animal, so it's been in the sewer," Mr Sims said as he held up the rat by the tail, after it died in a trap he had laid in a south-west London home.

Finding its way in for this rat meant gnawing a large hole through a plastic waste pipe leading down from a ground-floor toilet, judging by signs of biting around the area.

According to website Pest.co.uk, Britain's rat population surged by a quarter to an estimated 150 million last year. Mr Sims had been working seven days a week since the lockdown started in March last year, logging up to 12 jobs a day.

Britain is on its third lockdown since the pandemic took hold, which has provided ideal breeding conditions for rats.

"With lockdown, you're going to have buildings that are quiet, unoccupied, so it's going to be dark, it's going to be safe so they can breed undetected," Rentokil manager Paul Blackhurst said.

Deprived of food scraps thrown away at the back of buildings or on now abandoned city-centre streets, the nocturnal pests are also daring to venture out more.

There have been increased sightings of rats in broad daylight, strolling around residential neighbourhoods where rubbish bins of housebound residents are quicker to brim over in lockdown.

In rats' ravenous and never-ending quest for food, nothing resists their sharp incisors, leading to damage to wood, brick and even electrical cables, raising the risk of fire and floods.

With so many more people working from home, Mr David Lodge of Beaver Pest Control said, residents were more aware of the problem in their neighbourhoods, which has grown worse in the winter months as rodents seek refuge indoors from the cold.

Others are in for a shock when they return to dormant premises, with business owners finding the messy remains of marauding rodent revellers.

Mr Sims said the vermin business shows no sign of letting up.

After dumping his plump dead rat into a trash bag for incineration, he drove his pickup truck to the next job, in an infested commercial backyard.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE