Rats in the Toilet! A City Squats in Fear

Our Flickr pool's +Russ caught this Ave Rat just before it will need to hit the toilet.

As regular readers know, The SunBreak has a proud tradition of sensationalizing rodent-related news.

However, there's nothing sensationalized in our reporting on the skyrocketing cases of rats in even the richest Seattle toilets. (Except where we invite you to imagine a pair a tiny rat jaws locked on your buttocks, later in this piece--to our knowledge, no one's nether parts have been nipped.)

The Great Recession has been a boon to toilet-dwelling rats, it seems. The number of complaints--from people staring back at beady little eyes in their toilet--increased by about 32 percent from 2008 to 2009, from 57 rats-in-toilet (RIT) to 84!

King County has provided a map of complaints [pdf], from which you can learn one of two things: Either rats prefer Seattle's wealthier neighborhoods, or poor people don't complain to the city about a rat in the toilet. The rat just vanishes, and no one sees what happened.

IS THIS FOR REAL?! you may be wondering, startled into hitting Caps Lock. Oh, it's very real, chief. Here is the explanation for it:

Rats get up into toilets by following the scent of food washed down drains from your home to the sewer system. While searching for food they can climb your home’s stand pipe (the pipe that connects your homes drainage to the sewer). Unable to reach the kitchen sink they can come up into the toilet bowl.

To combat the toilet-rat outbreak, King County has a sewer-baiting program to locate areas where rats are entering the sewer system. They find a rat burrow, pour dye in it, and check the nearby sewer pipes for rat-tracked-in colors.

BUT WHAT CAN I DO?! you ask, still unaware of the Caps Lock issue. First, as noted above, the rats are following the smell of food, so don't wash grease down the sink, and keep garbage disposal use to a minimum. That's inviting a rat into your home to sink its snaggly yellow teeth into your ass. Keep your pipes clean: Follow one cup of baking soda with a cup of vinegar (or skip to the chase and use bleach) and rinse with boiling water.

If you do discover a rat--and here I'm paraphrasing King County's expert advice--for god's sake, put the toilet seat back down! Next scream for someone to get you some dishwasher detergent--that'll help make the rat sink, if you're brave enough to wedge the end under the toilet lid and squirt some in. Flush, flush, flush!

If this simply angers the rat, contact a King County professional via this form, or call (206) 205-4394, which sadly does not correspond to a fun mnemonic.

NEXT WEEK: There's a Marmot in My Tub!