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Rat patrol

St. Petersburg's rat man wages war on a battlefront that covers modest bungalows to million-dollar mansions. See, we've all got rats.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published July 26, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - He sniffs the air. He cocks his head, aims his nostrils at the ceiling. There it is, that odor, a little catty, but different. Mike Ahles smells a rat.

"Roof rat. Rattus rattus. Also known as a fruit rat."

Smelling rats is one of his talents. His city of St. Petersburg business card identifies him as an "environmental control technician," which is accurate as far as it goes, but hardly tells the whole, interesting story. For more than a quarter of a century he has been this city's unrelenting "rat man."

To him, the only good rat is a rat with advanced rigor mortis, preferably not in anyone's attic, under their bedroom floor or inside the dining room wall. For a city homeowner besieged by rats, he dispenses free advice and free poison if necessary, though with this dire caveat: "I can't control where a rat dies."

In a St. Petersburg back yard, a homeowner's eyes grow wide as a cesspool.

"If a rat dies in your attic or under your house you have two choices," Ahles always explains. "You can go in and get it. Or you can put out potpourri and tough it out. There's no stink like a dead rat stink."

At 47, Ahles is tall and somewhat athletic - in his line of work, a man sometimes has to leap out of the way of a frantic rat. Driving around the city in a Ford Explorer, he could be just another soccer dad except for the equipment he hauls around in back: rat traps, rat poison, rubber gloves and his bible, Robert M. Corrigan's Rodent Control: A Practical Guide for Pest Management Professionals.

"I like what I do," Ahles says. "I like working outdoors. And I have one of the few city jobs where people are always glad to see me."

Rats, or the fleas that live on rats, are capable of transmitting disease, including some fatal. Occasionally, a rat bites a baby or a homeless person who has gone to sleep with food on lips, hands or fingers. "Don't put your baby to bed with a bottle," Ahles tells people with rats in their homes.

Like hurricanes, rats also are hard on property. In your attic, they gnaw wood, plastic, wires and pipes. They eat their way through air-conditioning conduits.

"If your air-conditioning bill suddenly shoots up," says Ahles, "suspect rats. You are probably air-conditioning your attic."

St. Petersburg has no more of a rat problem than other cities. In fact, it may have fewer rat woes, thanks in part because of the efforts of Ahles. That said, the city has many rats.

Dozens of times a day, every day of the week, January through December, anxious citizens dial (727) 893-7360. Secretaries or voice-mail record the nature of complaints. The messages are passed on to Ahles or to his new assistant, Bob Turner.

Rats live wherever people live. They are comfortable among us. They like our garbage. They delight in devouring our oranges, mangoes and avocados. They sup on the feed we leave on the patio for birds. In the back yard, a rat will patiently wait for the dog to nod off. Then with impunity it will wolf down the Alpo.

In most cities, from New York to St. Petersburg, there are probably more rats than people. That is because rats are the sexual athletes of the mammal world. A male rat may copulate a dozen times or more a day with any number of females. According to some reports, satyrs among the rat population might have sex with another male if a female is unavailable.

". . . If you are in New York while you are reading this sentence or even in any other major city in America, then you are in close proximity to two rats having sex," wrote Robert Sullivan in his book, Rats.

At 3 months a female rat is sexually mature. After mating, she gives birth in less than a month to a half dozen or more pups. Then she goes out and gets pregnant again. Sometimes Mike Ahles discovers himself a nice active rat's nest. As Momma suckles her newborns, her previous litter - frisky 2-month-old teenagers - cavort in the same abode.

That is why killing a rat is something like stepping on an ant. Exterminate one and 10 are born to take its place.

"We can't kill them all," says the rat man. "All we can do is try to control them."

The day starts early, 7:30 to be exact, in an office on 28th Street in St. Petersburg. Ahles' desk, in a little cubbyhole, is no rat's nest. Even the pencils and pens know their place. However, a rubber rat - actually a pair of copulating rubber rats - mark Ahles' territory near a photograph of the man holding a dead rat by the tail in what can only be described as triumph.

In the morning, he schedules his day based on complaints of rat-weary citizenry who have begged for help. In the summer, he prefers making all of his calls before noon. Although he has lived in Florida four decades, he is a North Dakotan by birth and never acclimated to summer here. In the winter, he is more comfortable, but the rat work never stops.

"We get hammered in winter because the citrus is on the trees," he says. "Also, rats get cold and try to get into houses. Because we have more people living here in the winter, we have more encounters between people and rats. So there are more complaints."

First stop. Nice neighborhood. Guy just moved to St. Pete from Chicago. His yard is beautifully landscaped. He even has a pool. But now, as he talks, catch in his voice, it is obvious that there is trouble in paradise. The other night he happened to look out the window and saw a rat perched on the fence. A little while later he noticed a couple of rats bounding down the telephone wires like circus performers.

Hurricanes! Fatal shark attacks! Now rats!

Mike Ahles knocks on the door. Nobody answers. Knocks again. Hair mussed, eyes bloodshot, the new Florida citizen cracks open the door. Had he been dreaming of giant rats that emerge from sewers at nightfall?

"Is your gate locked?" Mike Ahles asks. "Any dogs?" Those are his standard questions. For the record, the preferred answer is always "No." Just in case, he carries pepper spray.

On the way to the back yard he studies the roof. Hole under the eaves. A small crack, actually, but just wide enough to allow the passage of a rat. And where the hose from the air-conditioner enters the house is another rat-friendly highway.

The rat man explains how to repair the holes at low cost. "The most important thing is keeping them out of the house." Second step is kill the suckers. Ahles produces a plastic box about the size of a purse. Inside the box is delicious seed. Rats love seed. The seed happens to be poisoned with an anticoagulant. Hungry rats eventually bleed to death.

He hangs the death box above the fence from a telephone pole. "I guarantee rats will find this. It should take care of your problem. But make sure you repair the house. I'm not responsible for where a rat dies."

For the record, he does no corpse recovery on the clock, though he sometimes helps disgusted friends. The trick for recovering a decaying rat from an attic or crawl space is not minding. Also, wear rubber gloves.

"I have seen some disgusting attics," he says. In one, the rats were nesting. Raccoons smelled the rats and invaded the attic, too. Raccoons ate the rats and set up a homestead. "The attic was like one giant box of (cat) litter."

Next stop. A rundown house a few miles away. Ahles notices gaping holes between roof and outside walls, wide enough for a weasel, much less a 15-inch-long rat.

Complainant says he saw a rat in his garage. Complainant swings open the garage door.

Ahles can smell the rats. Kind of a urine-musk odor. He can also see where rats have been traveling near ceiling beams. He sees the grease tracks from their tails and bottoms all over the place.

"Repair your house," Ahles says. "That's the first thing I would do. Then get yourself wooden traps. Peanut butter is a very good bait."

Complainant hangs on to every word.

"Don't put the traps on the floor. Put them up high on the shelves. Roof rats like to climb. Don't be discouraged if you don't get rats right away. Rats are cautious about something new in their environment. So give them a few days and you'll start getting them."

Complainant isn't taking notes but he should be.

"You will kill rats for about a week. Then it will stop. That's because you've killed the young rats, the dumb rats. The alpha rats, the more mature ones, have caught on.

"Remove the traps for two days. Then put them back with bait, but don't set the traps. Let the alpha rats eat without harm for a while. Then later in the week set the traps and you should start killing rats again."

Last stop. A house near U.S. 19. The yard is large and neatly kept. Years ago Ahles planted a death box. Long ago the poison was depleted. Now rats abound.

Ahles plans to fill the box with fresh poison. The box is in the hedges, covered by spider webs and roach eggs.

An inexperienced rat man would simply reach down and yank open the box.

But after 27 years of rat work Ahles knows to be careful.

Though he has never been bitten, a couple of times rats have bolted from a box and scampered up his arm.

He knocks on the death box. Anybody home? What was that? Rustling?

With a stick he opens the top of the box a crack.

The rat explodes out of the box and scampers across a shoe on the way to the underbrush.

No harm done except an elevated heartbeat.

"She had a nice little nest in there," Ahles says. "Now we'll give her a little poison."

Sometimes kind-hearted citizens ask him to spare the rats. "They want me to take them unharmed to, I don't know, Ratville USA, where each rat has its own pallet of cheese and an exercise wheel.

"But then that person sees a rat in the house, and then they don't mind if I kill it."

THE TROUBLE WITH RATS