[Community Outreach] In Wake of Infant’s Death, Terminix Helps With Rodent Battle

In late July, the Jefferson Parish Coroner’s Office announced that 3-month-old Natalie Hill died from blood loss due to numerous rat bites.

The Times-Picayune reported that “in a one-sentence press release, Coroner Robert Treuting listed the cause of Natalie Hill’s death as ‘exsanguination due to destruction of soft tissue secondary to murine activity.’ That means the baby died from blood loss because of the rat bites.”

The coroner’s office would not discuss whether the baby bled for an extended period of time, or whether an artery was struck causing massive bleeding immediately, the Times-Picayune reported.

Ed Martin, owner of New Orleans-based Terminix Service Co., told PCT that although the rodent population had been built up around this particular home, the community of Westwego, La., is no more prone to rodent problems than other areas of metropolitan New Orleans. (For instance, the neighborhood is not inundated with foreclosed homes). “We no longer have natural predators like foxes and hawks to take down the rodent population,” Martin said. “It’s perfectly normal when you let a rat population explode in a small area like that, (the rats) are going to be very aggressive looking for food. They will go after anything that is down: dogs, cats, it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, in this case it was a baby.”

In the wake of the infant’s death, Martin’s Terminix franchise and Ramelli Waste (which services garbage cans) volunteered to reduce the rodent population in the area. The companies are using a product called the RC Rat Wheel, a bait station containing rodenticide that is in the shape of a wheel and replaces one of the wheels of a garbage can (see related story, right). This device is tamper proof and has been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“The idea is to provide a constant available food source to the rodents,” Martin said. “As long as the rats keep eating the bait they will die. Of course you will not kill all the rodents, but you will suppress the population.”

The author is Internet editor of PCT magazine and can be reached at bharbison@giemedia.com.

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What is the Rat Wheel?
A new product was put to the test in the wake of the rodent problem in the New Orleans area – the RC Rat Wheel. The RC Rat Wheel is a substitute wheel for one or both wheels of an ordinary rolling plastic garbage can (with wheel diameters of 10 inches and greater). These cans are the typical garbage cans used in both residential and commercial neighborhoods.

The wheel is about two inches wider than the normal trash can wheel. This increase in width allows for rodenticides to be installed into the wheel hollow, and for a rodent entry port in the wheel to permit rodents to enter the wheel and find the bait. The RC Rat Wheel is the first to be added to the EPA’s list of tamper-resistant bait stations used for rodent control since 1996.

The product was invented by former airline pilot Cheryl Highet, in 2004, and it has a patent both domestically and internationally.

“The reason that it is effective is it plays into natural behavior of rodents,” Highet told PCT magazine. “We already know that rodents are going to trash carts and we have evidence of that in a number of ways. First of all, they are eating out of them and secondly they are chewing through them and doing damage, so why not make it easier for them? They don’t have to chew through the cart — they can go directly to that wheel.”

Highet said baits labeled for exterior uses can be used in the RC Rat Wheel.