Rats In Paris May Outnumber Humans: City Officials To Crack Down On Rodents In Public Parks

RTX2PDUG — In Paris in 2014, there were reportedly more than two rats per person living in the city. But that could be nothing compared to New York. Above, a rat was photographed poking its head through the opening of the bottom of a garbage can in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Oct. 18, 2016. Reuters

Public health officials in Paris will soon be ramping up a campaign of “action contre les rats”—closing off public squares, installing rodenticide, corking the rodents’ tunnels and cleaning up the furry little victims of now-ubiquitous rat traps, according to a city government press release.

The city has already closed off three squares—including the Cambronne and Garibaldi in the 15^th Arrondissement—as well as two gardens and the Champ de Mars, a large greenspace between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire. Next, the city plans to bar public entry to an additional square and the boulevard Richard-Lenoir, place new rat-resistant trash cans around the city and deploy environmental agents to watch for the rodents and keep litter from lingering in the streets where it might attract pests, according to the release.

The crackdown is nothing new for the City of Light, where as recently as July 2014—when a video surfaced showing dozens of rats scurrying through the Louvre gardens—there were reportedly more than two rats for every person living in the French capital. That year, authorities announced a five-point plan to make Paris the first rat-free city by 2025.

It’s not clear just how many of the rodents remain in the French capital, but if the campaign—which the city refers to as a “coup de poing,” the French phrase for “punch”—is any indication, they’re nowhere near that goal.

As Morgan Spurlock, who recently shot a so-called “horror documentary” called “Rats” for the Discovery Channel in Paris, told Esquire, the city’s sewers are “grimy and dirty and filled with rats.” The French metropolis, however, may not even compare to its most populous sister city across the Atlantic.

“They would not let us into the subways or the sewers of New York City,” Spurlock told the magazine, adding that authorities in the Big Apple wouldn’t tell him and his team why, but probably “don’t want you to see what’s in there.” “If there are that many rats in Paris, I can only imagine how many more there are in New York City.”