We’ve tried poisoning them. We’ve tried trapping them. We’ve tried — poorly — to put away the trash so they don’t have food. We find their homes and we destroy them. Hell, there are foxes running loose that eat them.

Yet the rats persist. They are constants in this city, like people running red lights and the sound of police helicopters at night.

So Baltimore is going to try something new when it comes to the rat problem. The Department of Public Works is going to start giving rats birth control sometime in early 2025, according to an agency spokesperson. Other cities, including those with famously virile rats, like New York, have tried it in the past.

The official product is called ContraPest. It’s a liquid, apparently sweet in taste, and it’s supposed to reduce sperm counts in male rats and disrupt ovarian function in females. Basically, it’s like bait. Someone sets it out, the rats consume it, and they theoretically cannot procreate.

Which is good, because when rats make babies, they make a lot of them. The typical female brown rat has about five litters a year with up to 12 pups per litter. Littermates will mate with each other. One mating pair can produce a population of more than 1,000 in a year.

Councilwoman Phylicia Porter has pushed DPW for more than two years to try birth control for rats, but the process had been stuck in the bureaucratic mud. A ContraPest representative gave a presentation to DPW about the product at some point over the last few months, and Porter, at a September City Council hearing, asked where the city was in the process of setting it out.

The answer then from an agency official was essentially “I don’t know.”

There is still a lot not known today. For one, DPW has not received the product, spokeswoman Mary Washington wrote in an email. And when they do get it, they have to figure out where to pilot it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t City Council members lobbying to make their districts first.

As part of a two-day retreat, the council recently toured the much maligned Cherry Hill sanitation yard where, earlier this year, Inspector General Isabel Cumming documented deplorable working conditions. Yvonne Moore-Jackson, the deputy head of the solid waste bureau, let council members know ContraPest was on their way.

“We’re going to be looking at the area that has the most concentration of rat infestations. I don’t know where that is,” Moore-Jackson said.

Councilman Antonio Glover loudly coughed and said “East Baltimore,” which got laughs all around. Glover, a former sanitation worker, used to be a member of DPW’s Rat Rubout team, which is, essentially, the city’s rodent posse.

Porter, of course, wants it in her district. It was her idea, after all.

And council newcomer Zac Blanchard made his own pitch. On his 30th birthday, Blanchard’s wife and a friend made custom stickers to mark the occasion and the logo was a “rat drinking a beer.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re thinking about where to pilot it ...” Blanchard said.

All three have pretty strong claims. As part of the September council hearing, DPW presented data on where the Rat Rubout team has spent the most time this year. Glover, Blanchard and Porter’s districts had the three most rat inspections, in that order.

There is another big question looming over ContraPest; a caveat more important than where to test it out. It’s appended to the end of the statement DPW emailed The Baltimore Banner.

“Once DPW receives ContraPest, our pest control workers will be properly trained on how to use it through a pilot program in heavy populated rat-infested areas to see if it actually works.”

Wait a minute. If it actually works? Oh, brother.

Luckily, scientists have checked. A study from researchers at the University of Nebraska found ContraPest works and that it was effective when New York City tried it in its subways in 2013. ContraPest does not permanently sterilize rats — it has to be continually administered for it to be effective — so for Baltimore to see long-running results, DPW will have to constantly administer doses or it will wear off and the rats will make more and more rats until we are all bowing down at the feet of our rat king. The city does not know how much that will cost.

There also is something easy that everyone can do to reduce the approximately 48,000 rats living in Charm City: Put trash where it belongs, in a can.