alt.hn

6/18/2026 at 1:05:58 PM

How Alberta Eradicated Rats

 https://worksinprogress.co/issue/albertas-war-on-rats/

by tzury

6/18/2026 at 3:50:50 PM

> But it was easy to prove warfarin was safe: a pest control officer held a series of local meetings where he ate warfarin-treated rolled oats while discussing rat control.

Got to love those live demos. Eating rat poison in front of the audience to prove it is safe!

by dan353hehe

6/18/2026 at 4:56:39 PM

The dose makes the poison. Warfarin is prescribed as a blood thinner for humans.

by _whiteCaps_

6/18/2026 at 8:48:40 PM

Poor guy, must of had so many complications

by linuxkernal

6/19/2026 at 1:49:31 AM

Warfarin is reversible with vitamin k. I suppose he was also getting a low dose per unit of body mass.

by maxerickson

6/19/2026 at 5:20:22 AM

When we had mice in our house years ago, we tried for a few weeks setting poison bait in the garage to get rid of them. We could tell the mice were eating the bait, but there was still no end to the mice.

We then had a thought... what if the mice were also eating the dog food in the garage? The container lid for the dog food was not very strong (weak and flexible enough that a mouse could possibly squeeze in and out), and coincidentally, that dog food was also high in Vitamin K.

Once we got better sealed containers to store the dog food, it only took a few days before we started seeing delirious, sick mice running around aimlessly in plain day light. Shortly after that, we stopped seeing them entirely.

It's possible the dog food was not reversing the poison. Maybe with the dog food locked up they started eating more bait, or maybe it simply took longer than we expected for the poison kick in. But regardless, we definitely learned a valuable lesson about keeping the pet food well sealed!

by flakes

6/19/2026 at 7:08:22 AM

Just curious, you poisoned them once and no mice returned ever since? In my house I had mice during the cold/wet season. Attempts to get rid of the population by killing them were futile. (House is now free of mice though. I secured every single possibility to get in during the summer. I read some mice can get through gaps that are 1 cm or .4 inches wide.)

by slow_typist

6/19/2026 at 12:29:37 PM

We did do a lot of work sealing the exterior of the home, as well as removal of bird feeders near the house itself. The poison likely wasn’t a silver bullet, but I recall it (along with removing any access to easy food) having the most dramatic impact overall.

by flakes

6/19/2026 at 11:05:22 AM

Yeah, without sealing entry points, they just keep coming. Not only can they can squeeze through tiny holes, they leave a trail of pheromones behind them letting other mice know where to come in. Mice infestations are awful. Hate the buggers.

by firmretention

6/19/2026 at 12:31:20 PM

Ah I did not know the pheromone part. So it could be a completely unrelated clan that moves in next time.

In older houses it is nearly impossible to find all entries… they can climb, and will even enter through the roof.

by slow_typist

6/19/2026 at 4:33:07 PM

Yup. My house is 50 years old and a townhome. I was killing 3-4 mice a week at one point! Got the entry points sealed and it's down to 2-3 a year. Will probably never get it down to zero because they can get in through my neighbors and find their way here somehow.

by firmretention

6/19/2026 at 8:05:17 PM

My house has a newer adjacent part with its own roof, pretty isolated from the old house. But I had mice on both attics. Finding their way from one attic to the other was the easiest part. But I needed infrared camera surveillance to figure where they entered the building. From the footage it was pretty clear that they never stayed long in the new attic. They entered through the new building, climbed up to the attic, than traversed to the old attic where they probably did all kinds of mouse things including raising their offspring.

by slow_typist

6/19/2026 at 2:41:04 AM

Was the guy secretly eating Special K cereal?

by sandworm101

6/18/2026 at 10:20:21 PM

*have had

by loloquwowndueo

6/19/2026 at 4:30:08 AM

* would of

by jrflowers

6/19/2026 at 11:55:13 AM

Your killing me, man

by loloquwowndueo

6/19/2026 at 8:01:22 PM

Don’t take a fence

by jrflowers

6/19/2026 at 8:08:48 PM

This thread totally made my day. Thanks!

by loloquwowndueo

6/18/2026 at 7:34:36 PM

Is it only the dose? I think I read somewhere that rodents are especially vulnerable to this substance for some genetic reason. To lazy to check again. Not to lazy to pronounce my ignorance in a comment. Oh my.

by scotty79

6/18/2026 at 8:18:48 PM

>Is it only the dose?

I think they meant, for humans, the dose makes the poison. We would have to eat a very large amount of warfarin to have trouble. Rats get hurt from a small amount.

Poison is dose dependent, but the actual dose dependency is different between species.

by graeme

6/18/2026 at 7:59:38 PM

I mean, however close we might treat them as, they're still fundamentally diferent animals

Since they can't throw up or burp, something that produces enough gas (More than a regular soda) could in theory kill a rat, but just make a human slightly inconvenienced, or on the same idea, you could wrap the poisson on an emetic agent to make it safer while not affecting the rat at all

by joseda-hg

6/19/2026 at 2:42:55 AM

Metabolic rate. The canary doesnt die fast because it is genetically sensitive. It dies fast because a birds metabolic rate is like a firecracker compared to ours.

by sandworm101

6/18/2026 at 9:59:23 PM

A correction:

"One mayor refused to cooperate because he thought the program was a distraction cooked up by the ruling United Conservative Party."

The UCP was established in 2017 and has no relation to the Social Credit Party that controlled Alberta's legislature during the time period being spoken of.

by beloch

6/19/2026 at 1:09:55 AM

Saying "no relation" is almost stretching it a bit. I kinda give hats off to someone for the slipup. It's not the same legal entity but there's a continuous ideological (and even personal) connection going all the way back.

The way I see it ... Peter Lougheed through Getty and (arguably Stelmach era) was a bit of a brief interruption. His urban, pragmatic PCs pushed the older rural, evangelical Socreds out of power in the 70s.. but that populist movement just went briefly into a (vaguely) outsider status, organized through Alberta Report, etc got into Klein's cabinet, found a national voice in Preston Manning's Reform Party, and returned provincially via the Wildrose Party, and finally triumphally recaptured the province under the banner of the UCP

So not legally the same part, but frankly just really the same minus all the weird fixation on currencies, banks, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (... so far!)

All of this off topic from rats. (Maybe?)

by cmrdporcupine

6/18/2026 at 3:22:36 PM

I live in Alberta. No rats here. Also the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.

by mig39

6/18/2026 at 11:44:11 PM

Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve lived in Ontario (in cities and the country) and have never seen a rat here. I know they exist but it’s not like we’re inundated by them. Maybe some specific businesses have problems with them, but it’s not something you see every day.

I also lived in Montreal and did see them there sometimes. This was always early morning when I was out running - did not see them in Toronto, Ottawa, etc under similar conditions.

Edit based on reading some other comments: I have seen lots of coyotes and foxes so maybe that explains fewer rats. I know Montreal has coyotes but I’ve never seen them there and where I was there were also squirrels everywhere suggesting fewer predators.

by andy99

6/18/2026 at 11:55:04 PM

Maybe the rats only speak French and avoid primarily English-speaking provinces.

by janderson215

6/19/2026 at 12:50:52 AM

I live in Ottawa and I watched a crow rip a dead brown rat apart in my front street this week. I don’t see them often but they’re here. (I swear I live in a nice neighbourhood)

by kimos

6/19/2026 at 11:07:40 AM

I never really saw them until I started working around Vanier. Seen some huge colonies near dumpsters.

by firmretention

6/19/2026 at 3:00:23 AM

There are certainly rats in Hamilton and Toronto; and I had the misfortune of dealing with them in my home at one point. They ate through (or under) the crawl space, and they would eat through anything we tried to store food in.

Unlike the sibling though I couldn't claim a nice neighborhood, it was near a soy processing factory.

by TheCycoONE

6/19/2026 at 1:27:37 AM

You sure see them everyday in Metro Vancouver

by pigeons

6/19/2026 at 12:51:51 AM

I care about the Lyme more than the rats tbh. That is way more likely to fuck you up long term than anything a rat will bring in this day and age. We aren’t getting the black plague anymore.

by kimos

6/19/2026 at 3:22:54 AM

Around 7 people the US get the plague each year. Yes that’s low, but it’s low specially because measures actively keeping it low.

Which means understanding and maintaining these systems is still valuable as even if millions aren’t actively dying, that can change,

by Retric

6/19/2026 at 11:14:27 AM

Whereas tens of thousands contract Lyme, often in life altering infections. Lyme is a big deal. But yes, I agree, we can both aim to reduce new disease without letting old vectors for disease back in.

by kimos

6/18/2026 at 4:07:52 PM

They likely spread rocky mountain fever instead, if they are dog ticks like we have in Colorado.

by sojournerc

6/18/2026 at 3:39:08 PM

Albertan here too. Can confirm no rats

My friend got Lyme disease from a tick though so I can't agree with that part

by bluefirebrand

6/19/2026 at 4:07:34 AM

A tick bite in alberta? diagnosed lyme? when? seems very unlikely - there are no recorded cases in the 30+ years of tracking of a case of lyme disease from a bite _in alberta_. All from exposure elsewhere

(not to say that alberta will stay that lucky forever)

by jessewmc

6/19/2026 at 4:16:19 AM

Possible she wasn't in Alberta when she got the tick bite, I'm not 100% certain. She may have been on a trip to Saskatchewan or something but she lives in Alberta and definitely was diagnosed with lyme disease from a tick bite.

Possible the bite happened elsewhere and just wasn't discovered until she got back home though. She does travel around a bit

by bluefirebrand

6/19/2026 at 2:12:40 AM

They don’t spread Lyme yet

by dyauspitr

6/18/2026 at 4:55:19 PM

> the ticks here don't spread Lyme disease.

this is out of date information unfortunately. With warming climate, the black-legged tick has spread into Alberta and samples have been found with the Lyme disease bacterium.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/tick-lyme-diseas...

by cmrdporcupine

6/18/2026 at 8:19:06 PM

From Alberta, never saw a rat in my life until visiting BC...

Gophers everywhere though.

by dismalaf

6/18/2026 at 3:20:15 PM

Tom Scott did a video a few years ago about New Zealand's attempt to eliminate rats by 2050.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcp1BfPUeOc

The program is actually called "Predator Free 2050" and also aims to eliminate possums and stoats. No mention is made of Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs.

by staplung

6/18/2026 at 3:24:29 PM

>Uruk-hai, orcs, or Balrogs

Aren't they native?

by tokai

6/18/2026 at 3:47:56 PM

Had they not been so greedy mining for mithril, maybe there wouldn't have been Balrogs. Not sure if that makes Balrogs invasive.

by dmbrThnYou

6/18/2026 at 3:56:44 PM

Aren't there only a few of them? Is a few invasive?

How does a balrog reproduce btw?

by whynotmaybe

6/18/2026 at 3:58:22 PM

You see, when two Maia love each other very much...

by debo_

6/18/2026 at 5:54:38 PM

Uruk-hai are GMO

by bragr

6/18/2026 at 5:54:54 PM

We sure have a lot of gophers though. They are cuter but you should still treat them like rats, no touch or try to play with them. Lots of diseases...

by swader999

6/18/2026 at 4:56:13 PM

Related:

On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech, global war on rats (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17821534 - Aug 2018 (1 comment)

On the front lines of humanity’s high-tech war on rats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9540096 - May 2015 (32 comments)

I thought there had been other threads about this but couldn't find them. Anyone?

by dang

6/18/2026 at 7:32:12 PM

New York claims a small victory in 'forever war on rats' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42918425 - Feb 2025 (204 comments)

Cats are no match for New York City's rats (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38333054 - Nov 2023 (77 comments)

How rats became an inescapable part of city living - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19413214 - Mar 2019 (52 comments)

The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207172 - Feb 2019 (14 comments)

Drones Help Rid Galapagos Island of Invasive Rats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078518 - Feb 2019 (58 comments)

New Zealand’s War on Rats (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891549 - April 2018 (34 comments)

New Zealand’s War on Rats Could Change the World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730337 - Nov 2017 (3 comments)

by NaOH

6/18/2026 at 6:36:42 PM

Lots of rodents in Alberta. The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice. We need more bullsnakes.

by BXLE_1-1-BitIs1

6/18/2026 at 7:30:55 PM

> The neighbourhood cats keep the mice and hantavirus down. Aircraft are often infested with mice

They aren't doing a good job of keeping them "down" if they're on planes.

by triceratops

6/19/2026 at 1:13:45 AM

Airports have tons of food (grass environment + human garbage), tons of mouse habitat (grassy areas, outbuildings, machinery), and not many cats.

by cucumber3732842

6/19/2026 at 1:58:48 PM

It was a joke. If mice are in aircraft they are "up" (in the air), not "down".

by triceratops

6/18/2026 at 7:25:58 PM

Time to flip the Samuel Jackson quote upside down, we need more mf'in snakes on the mf'in plane!

by sellmesoap

6/18/2026 at 3:43:42 PM

I wonder if we stopped trying to eradicate coyotes we might have an easier time with rats. I personally would rather see a coyote than a rat.

by mekdoonggi

6/18/2026 at 6:06:07 PM

Around here the coyotes eat mice. I'll see a golf ball size blob of crushed bones and fur on the driveway now and then.

A few years ago, a coyote mom with her 5 pups set up shop on my front lawn. She'd keep a weather eye on me, and me on her, and we got along fine. Over the summer, the number of pups dwindled. I saw a severed head of one a ways away, I think it was done by an eagle. I think only 2 survived the summer.

I sometimes see 6 eagles at a time circling overhead. One flew by so close I could have touched its wingtip. Wow!

A bobcat lives nearby. I see his tracks in the snow, and saw him a couple times.

I live well within the Seattle metropolitan area. Isn't it amazing?

by WalterBright

6/18/2026 at 7:54:36 PM

Over across the sound, we get bald eagles stealing salmon off of people's grills :)

by toast0

6/18/2026 at 8:49:56 PM

Nice try Bob. I know it's you, and I know you stole my salmon that one time.

Bald eagles indeed!

by b112

6/18/2026 at 4:02:48 PM

This inevitably brings us to the story of the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone, and how they eat the deer which brings back a whole new slew of changes.

by OptionOfT

6/18/2026 at 5:58:38 PM

Not to be downer, but recent studies have not corroborated those effects.

>One of the most celebrated claims about Yellowstone’s wolves is facing a major challenge. Scientists say the study behind the famous trophic cascade story relied on flawed methods that overstated the ecological impact of wolf recovery. Their reanalysis found no evidence for a dramatic, park-wide surge in willow growth. Instead, the effects appear smaller and vary from place to place.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260613215510.h...

by bragr

6/18/2026 at 6:02:32 PM

Is there a word for a popular misconception that nonetheless produces a positive result? The understanding by the public of the effects could be completely wrong, but the reintroduction of wolves and the restoration of Yellowstone are still good things.

by mekdoonggi

6/18/2026 at 10:04:56 PM

propaganda?

by lovemenot

6/19/2026 at 4:28:28 AM

There are tons of coyotes in Alberta, to the point where my very urban university has had to put up "Be Coyote Smart" signs since they keep showing up on campus. Nobody that I'm aware of is trying to eradicate coyotes here either, aside from the occasional farmer during calving season.

by gucci-on-fleek

6/18/2026 at 4:56:06 PM

Coyote populations are climbing, not shrinking.

by cmrdporcupine

6/18/2026 at 6:03:33 PM

I know, which makes our attempts at killing them even dumber.

by mekdoonggi

6/19/2026 at 12:05:45 AM

Just give them all ACME catalogs and watch the problem solve itself.

by jherskovic

6/18/2026 at 6:04:38 PM

The problem is they've grown accustomed to urban environments, are way more fearless than they used to be.

I live rural (Ontario) and we hear but never see them. But if you go into town, they're a frequent occurrence. Grabbing people's pets and stuff.

If it was just foxes... fine. But coyotes can be a problem.

by cmrdporcupine

6/18/2026 at 6:09:32 PM

Once an owl sat on the porch railing, looking into the window. It was huge! What a magnificent sight.

by WalterBright

6/19/2026 at 12:17:45 AM

Good. Outdoor cats are a bigger problem than a few native coyotes.

by coryrc

6/19/2026 at 6:31:38 AM

I’m definitely pro coyote but they’ve been known to snatch a leashed small dog while on a walk in Texas exurbs.

by chasd00

6/19/2026 at 2:05:49 AM

don't get me wrong, i'm on team coyote and i keep my cat indoors. i like to listen to them yip at night around here when they've cornered a rabbit or something

but i've seen stories/footage of people's dogs-on-leashes getting attacked and that's a bit scary

by cmrdporcupine

6/18/2026 at 4:34:45 PM

fox eat rats too

by sidewndr46

6/18/2026 at 5:11:06 PM

Farmers and pet-owners might prefer the rats.

by hephaes7us

6/18/2026 at 3:34:03 PM

> Author: Deena Mousa

clearly an article sponsored by Big Mouse

by yawnxyz

6/19/2026 at 6:05:47 AM

Clever joke. FYI Mousa is the Arabic pronunciation of Moses.

by greazy

6/19/2026 at 8:23:14 AM

Anglicized Arabic I guess. In my spelling, it is Musa.

by mcmoor

6/18/2026 at 3:44:38 PM

Great read. I didn't know how exactly the rats were eradicated from Alberta something I have just heard and taken for granted. Reading the article provided a great overview of how much effort it really took to do it.

I would like to mention that, even though Alberta is rat free, we still have mice that can make your life misreble if they somehow enter your house/office.

by tweaktastic

6/18/2026 at 4:24:47 PM

Here in Boise Idaho, we are watching the local governments completely fail. We've not had rats here until somewhat recently. The State, County, and cities have all taken a "not our problem" attitude to it and instead of putting in any sort of pest management/eradication programs they've basically just said "good luck everyone".

by cogman10

6/18/2026 at 2:36:35 PM

Every so often I'll mention online that Alberta has no rats, and inevitably there will be an American responding in absolute disbelief saying I'm full of shit.

I may not live in Alberta, but luckily rats aren't really a thing in my neck of the woods. Travel an hour down the highway and it's a different story.

Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach before in my life. Not a one. I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.

by Hugsbox

6/18/2026 at 3:09:40 PM

"Alberta has no rats" is a bit of a simplification, as the linked article goes into in depth. They do find rat investations (typically) in the border zones, and some sneak through, both wild and domesticated. Due to ongoing management though the statement is true in broad strokes. We have lots of mice and all sorts of ground squirrels (including a ridiculously awesome "museum") but thankfully very few rats.

https://www.gopherholemuseum.org/

by skeeter2020

6/18/2026 at 3:18:15 PM

Canada's shipping ports have had rat infestations for hundreds of years, even up the Great Lakes. DNA studies show that once a local population became established long ago, it defended itself repeatedly from incursions, and carries on. Alberta has no sea ports, so rats hitch rides there on trains, trucks, and in packaging. The scale is much, much smaller, so Alberta is somewhat able to eradicate them.

by cf100clunk

6/19/2026 at 5:49:14 PM

Nope, I can personally confirm there is not one single rat in Alberta. I counted them myself - counted the entire rat population in an afternoon. Only took so long because I'm terrible at counting, but I came to a final tally of zero.

by Hugsbox

6/18/2026 at 6:11:10 PM

The exterminator told me you either have rats or mice. That's 'cuz the rats are good at eating the mice.

by WalterBright

6/18/2026 at 6:50:15 PM

In some parts of the world I bet that's true. I can say with a high degree of certainty that I have neither.

by Hugsbox

6/18/2026 at 3:43:11 PM

I spent the first half of my life in Alberta; had never seen a rat nor a cockroach. I moved further east in the country, cockroaches in my first apartment the first week there... and then discovered rats near the waterfront within the month.

My dad and uncles lived near the southern border as kids, would hunt rats by the train station/grain elevator with a .22 back in the 50's & 60's.

by d_runs_far

6/19/2026 at 7:26:06 AM

I grew up in Florida, where you might come home and find a cockroach walking out of the bathroom with a towel around its head saying, "We need more toilet paper."

Okay, I kid, but it was almost that bad. We say there are no houses in Florida without cockroaches, just houses where they (mostly) aren't visible.

Now I live in Singapore, famous for being a clean city, and there are rats and cockroaches galore. Tropics, man....

by paulmooreparks

6/18/2026 at 3:13:25 PM

Living in a warm climate US city i noticed roaches almost disappeared once off the first floor, i saw only one in five years in a 7th-floor apartment.

by drew870mitchell

6/18/2026 at 3:53:38 PM

> I've seen pictures of em, and I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those things irl I would absolutely shit myself.

I always thought this was interesting (how many people are super scared of cockroaches). I'm absolutely terrified of bugs, I see cockroaches very rarely, and while I wouldn't pet one... They're not too bad? There's tons of bugs that are way scarier. Spiders, house centipedes, camel crickets. And that's just the stuff that actually exists near me. If I encountered an average Australian insect, good God, I'd run screaming. But cockroaches? Eh

I assume it's because cockroaches are associated with filth, and they tend to occur in large numbers. But as individual bugs, on the surface level they're not too bad. (Not "disagreeing" or anything, just think the different perspectives are neat)

by ipdashc

6/18/2026 at 4:19:08 PM

Spiders are beneficial. Please don’t kill them. Cock roaches do spread disease. I buy Combat Source Kill Max Roach Insect Killer Gel with fipronil.

https://www.epa.gov/ipm/cockroaches-and-schools

by rawgabbit

6/18/2026 at 4:52:43 PM

I'm aware, I don't kill spiders if I can avoid it. And I know cockroaches are nastier. I just think it's surprising that people are so visually afraid of them, since they're not a very scary-looking bug.

by ipdashc

6/18/2026 at 5:19:42 PM

Growing up poor, cock roaches symbolize poverty and the run down sad places I used to live in. I can’t stand them as they bring back bad memories of my childhood.

by rawgabbit

6/18/2026 at 7:33:57 PM

That makes a lot of sense. I didn't think about it that way.

by ipdashc

6/18/2026 at 8:54:23 PM

Cockroaches make me uncomfortable, but I would not say I fear them. As a kid I was the designated person in the family to deal with all manner of bugs and just whatever.

Except for whatever reason, I am absolutely terrified of moths and butterflies. I don't want to be touched by either of those ever and I don't want them inside my house. I can appreciate butterflies are pretty and colourful and all that but I still don't want them to be near me.

by footy

6/18/2026 at 5:08:03 PM

For me it's less fear than an instant "I must kill it / get it out of here" feeling. A big spider or centipede gives me a more intense "creepy crawly" shiver but a cockroach is way higher on the disgust scale for some reason.

by FeteCommuniste

6/18/2026 at 7:32:36 PM

That makes total sense actually!

by ipdashc

6/18/2026 at 3:46:18 PM

I live in a wooded, fairly rural area and I see cockroaches outside, under leaves, fallen branches, etc. but they don't really come into the house.

by SoftTalker

6/18/2026 at 4:51:32 PM

Depending on where you live, those probably aren't the problematic species known as the German cockroach that typically infests human living quarters.

by mordechai9000

6/18/2026 at 5:10:07 PM

The big ones (oriental, not German) unfortunately come into my house pretty regularly. Setting out poison helps but hasn't rid of us of all of them.

by FeteCommuniste

6/18/2026 at 2:46:36 PM

Re: cockroaches, I haven't seen them until my mid 30s, when I started traveling to warm countries.

by neonstatic

6/18/2026 at 4:35:53 PM

isn't it kind of moot? there are plenty of other rodents. They fill the gap left by rats. I'm not really sure eliminating all rodents would be a good idea for the ecosystem.

by sidewndr46

6/18/2026 at 4:43:18 PM

Rats are, to my knowledge, more destructive and spread more disease. Obviously eliminating all rodents would be disastrous for the ecosystem, but rats in particular are an invasive species in North America so eliminating them specifically doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

by Hugsbox

6/18/2026 at 4:10:02 PM

> Also, as an aside, people often don't believe me when I say I've never seen a cockroach

That one is pretty shocking. When I lived in South Carolina I remember I used to walk this one road late at night. Once it was dark enough I could see them scattering underneath the streetlights on the fucking sidewalk. Reminded me of sidewalk lizards in Florida, but grosser. I live in the Midwest now. I’m just glad they’re smaller here and don’t fly.

by tennfown

6/18/2026 at 6:54:01 PM

I'm told that the nearest city to me "probably" has cockroaches, but I avoid the city like the plague so no roach encounters for me thus far. I'm 30 and have never left the Canadian Maritime provinces in my life, so I guess it makes sense that there's plenty of "normal" things I've never come across.

by Hugsbox

6/18/2026 at 2:41:48 PM

Don’t receive shipments of goods from out of province then. Vermin get transported in packaging easily.

by mc32

6/18/2026 at 2:47:25 PM

Alberta of course has rats. Short of being a hermit nation with impassable borders, the alternative is impossible.

But they maintain such a critically low number through aggressive, non-stop actions that we declare it "rat free", though that's a misnomer. Similar to the measles free status doesn't actually mean measles free, but rather that it isn't spreading uncontrolled.

Though as someone who lives in Ontario, I just wanted to add that I've never seen a vermin rat in my life in this province. Not in Toronto or its subways, not on its streets, nor in various other cities throughout the province. I've seen mice, of course, but never rats. I know they exist here, but someone having not experienced them doesn't mean much.

by llm_nerd

6/18/2026 at 2:51:02 PM

This bit made me laugh

But wild rats are rare. Albertans have grown so unaccustomed to rats that they frequently mistake squirrels, gophers, and other small animals for them: of the 875 reported sightings in 2025, only 47 turned out to be actual rats.

by y2244

6/18/2026 at 3:30:45 PM

I bet most of those were rats

by functionmouse

6/18/2026 at 2:56:24 PM

I've seen plenty of rats in Toronto. I used to live around Chinatown and I could practically punt a rat just walking out my door at night.

by ddarolfi

6/18/2026 at 3:00:57 PM

I lived in Chinatown in Toronto (College and Spadina) and I saw a rat the size of a cat running around the inside of a Chinese supermarket around 2am when I was walking around at night during my university years. I also saw smaller rats and roaches running around Chinese restaurants as well.

by freediddy

6/18/2026 at 5:21:06 PM

where in Toronto did you live?

Definitely not my experience. Lived at Spadina & Dundas.

by soperj

6/18/2026 at 4:13:09 PM

[dead]

by rawgabbit

6/18/2026 at 3:34:08 PM

So, even impossible things can be made possible if there's enough determination and political will.

by stackedinserter

6/18/2026 at 3:58:20 PM

eliminate malaria from the continental US. Check.

eliminate smallpox. Check.

eliminate measles. Own goal.

by forlorn_mammoth

6/18/2026 at 4:27:13 PM

Another own goal - eliminate screw worm from north america...

by itintheory

6/19/2026 at 2:24:32 AM

Is it your position that private pest control could not achieve the same or better result for at most the same cost?

Are you an economic calculation problem denier?

by gbacon

6/19/2026 at 2:51:13 PM

Can you keep going and generate more assumptions about me?

by stackedinserter

6/19/2026 at 5:22:16 AM

Albertan here. Never seen a rat outside of a research lab. We do have mice though.

by textmessage

6/18/2026 at 6:12:57 PM

there's no rats but there has been an uptick in voles and other rodents

also Alberta, Canada mentioned

by msukkarieh

6/18/2026 at 6:35:30 PM

I wonder if people could do bed bugs? Those are rather annoying.

by tim333

6/18/2026 at 6:36:16 PM

And pigeons!

by hollerith

6/19/2026 at 6:47:36 AM

The whole public buy-in is very much what is going on in Queensland, Australia right now that is attempting to eradicate fire ants. Even the funding fight to get the Commonwealth and neighbouring states to pitch in, as they have the potential to become endemic to the whole continent.

We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.

by dwd

6/18/2026 at 10:07:24 PM

... ... all i learned is that eventually Alberta will have rats, and that nowhere else can ever replicate their success. Thank you, next

by conartist6

6/18/2026 at 3:53:25 PM

Alberta has shown us that proper policy incentives can drive meaningful change. Instead of leaving rats to languish in cellars, they created incentives for them to do meaningful work in the provincial government instead.

by debo_

6/18/2026 at 4:05:09 PM

The irony that they figured out how to eliminate rats, but can’t diversify from oil and gas is pretty special.

by verelo

6/19/2026 at 4:33:08 AM

It's unsurprising from a financial perspective, since both oil and gas (directly) and rat eradication (indirectly) make the province a ton of money.

by gucci-on-fleek

6/18/2026 at 3:54:46 PM

Also, many of them are sepa-RAT-ists.

by kazinator