You should not be shocked to hear Baltimore has a rat problem — we put them on bumper stickers for crying out loud. There are tens of thousands of Rattus norvegicus all over, munching on trash in alleys, hiding in vacants or, maybe, burrowing into your home right this very moment.
And it’s been this way for decades. A study published in 2005 estimated the city’s rat population at around 48,000, roughly the same level as the last time someone tried to count Baltimore’s little brown rodents in 1952.
The thing about common city rats is they reproduce quickly, so much so they make rabbits look deliberate. The typical female brown rat has about five litters a year, with up to 12 “pups” (yes, really) a litter. Thankfully, because this is in 2024 and not plague-stricken 1346, there is a solution.
Enter ContraPest, AKA rat birth control. It’s a sweet liquid the rodents like and its ingredients are designed to reduce sperm counts in male rats and disrupt ovarian function in females. Washington, D.C., has used it, and so has New York in its subways.
For two years, Councilwoman Phylicia Porter has asked the Department of Public Works to try it in Baltimore. Porter’s South Baltimore district, the 10th, has had the third-most DPW rat inspections so far this year, according to data the agency shared Wednesday at a hearing of the council’s Health, Environment and Technology committee. East Baltimore’s 13th and Southeast Baltimore’s 1st districts are first- and second-most, respectively.
Rats are a bit of a pet issue for Porter — squeamish constituents have called her to come pick up dead ones for them. On Wednesday, Porter asked again about birth control. The answer was bureaucratic.
“The issue that we have is our permit allows us to have a certain type of, uh, poisons and bait, so we have to look into how we can use that,” Yvonne Moore-Jackson, the deputy head of the solid waste division, told Porter.
ContraPest has visited with DPW and given a presentation on their product, Moore-Jackson said, but that’s about the extent of it without the proper permit.
“Where are we in that process?” Porter asked.
“I haven’t been involved in it, but I can get you an answer,” Moore-Jackson replied.
While Porter waits on answers about rat birth control, what is DPW doing otherwise to control the population? The department has an 11-person “Rat Rubout” team which is responsible for inspections across the city and setting out traps and poison. According to agency data, the squad — we’ll call them rat rubbers — completed more than 76,000 inspections over the first six months of 2024.
That would mean DPW’s 11-person team completed more than 400 inspections a day, every day, for six months. Assuming an eight-hour work day, that’s about one inspection a minute.
Porter seemed skeptical. “How are you all garnering success, tracking success? Because the rat population is still proliferating at a very high rate.”
Blame it on all the trash, Moore-Jackson said. Some Baltimoreans seem to have a hard time figuring out trash goes in trash cans, not the ground. And because trash attracts rats, well, duh.
Councilwoman Danielle McCray, a Democrat from the east side, said while trash should be simple — “put it in a can” — the administration could do more to get people in the know about the rat problem and what they can do to curb it.
Both DPW and the Department of Housing and Community Development will attend community meetings or pass out flyers at events, officials said. McCray, who chairs the health committee and called Wednesday’s hearing, said that wasn’t good enough.
“It’s not going to be solved that way,” she told agency officials. “It’s eight to 10 members in my community association meetings and I got 40,000 people I represent.”
“We need a real campaign,” McCray said. “We had campaigns when I was growing up. We do not have them now.”
