In what late film star James Cagney might refer to as a case of, “You dirty rats!”, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has delighted animal protectionists with a proposal to establish a task force to address the issue of peaceful coexistence with the rodents.
Rubbish collectors in the city might disagree but the initiative has been embraced by the animal protection organisation, Paris Animaux Zoopolis.
Paris has been struggling with a major rat infestation for several years and Hildago has faced criticism over the situation in the French capital and is now introducing a new strategy. The aim is “to be as efficient as possible while ensuring that it is not unbearable for Parisians”, she said.
Paris Animaux Zoopolis, which calls for “non-lethal methods” of dealing with the rodent population, told AFP it was pleased by the announcement.
Backing the activists’ view that rats should be more appreciated, deputy Mayor Anne Souyris, of the green party, said they did not pose “a public health problem”.
She based her assertion on what she claims is the fact that “cases of leptospirosis transmitted by bites only affect refuse collectors, who can be helped with a vaccine”.
However, she added: “This does not mean that rats should be allowed to roam around the city”, apparently referring to current municipal regulations that have been in place since 2017.
As well as buying “thousands of new bins” and lethal traps, “when we can’t do otherwise”, the city council is also banking on “prevention” and “fines” for residents who indiscriminately discard rubbish on the ground, saying – somewhat confusingly – that doing so was both “the major cause of rats multiplying and [of] becoming extinct”.
Douchka Markovic, responsible for animal welfare and pest control in Paris’ 18th district and an elected member of the Animalist Party ecologist group, provoked debate in 2022 by calling for the use of less pejorative terms for rats. She stressed the rodents were “useful” in the city’s ecosystem and denounced what she called an “abnormal, unjustified fear” of rats.
However, the centre-right municipal councillor, Geoffroy Boulard, was less impressed with the latest idea of being kind to rats. He said he found allegations of negative prejudgement of rats and aspirations for cohabitating with them unconvincing. He based his apparent dislike of the furry creatures on the fact that health services in a recent report said rats represented a vector of bacterial transmission and the huge number of them in Paris was a danger to public health.
“We will never resign ourselves to the City of Light becoming the ‘garbage can-city of the world’,” he declared.
Paris is among the 10 most rat-infested cities in the world, according to a study run by the website Topito, with an estimated 6 million of the critters enjoying life in the city.
The rodent issue became famous worldwide in November last year, after a video was posted online that showed a woman in a live interview in Paris experiencing a ‘funny feeling’, which was, it turned out, caused by a rat crawling into her clothing.
Whether that particular rodent was “dirty” or not was never established.
Paris : Un rat sort de la manche de son pull #LaMatinale pic.twitter.com/GRctoBMk6y
— CNEWS (@CNEWS) November 29, 2022
