Recent Stories with tag rat

Our pet & wildlife and real estate correspondent, Lyle George, provides this picture he snapped while heading to Gary Fukushima's show at Tula's in Belltown last night. The SunBreak has a long history of Seattle rat coverage, but this is the first time I've seen a solution that literally takes a bite out of the rat population downtown. Rats of 2nd and Bell--you're on notice.

UPDATE: A helpful commenter gives you...the rest of the story. "The dog's name is Ozzie and rat hunting is his favorite hobby. He is a Dachshund, not a beagle, and he is 11 years old. He can be seen most days around Belltown. His owner has plenty of other pictures of him catching rats (some bigger than that one) and then there’s the two Seattle officers that provided the spotlights one night so that the crowd of people that gathered to see Ozzie with one of his prizes could take pictures. He had on his cowboy hat that night."

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.... (more)

Last March, Kevin Malcolm and Spencer Fornaciari recorded the first episode of the Backroom Comics Podcast. Since then, they've recorded 71 episodes, covered the Emerald City Comicon twice, road-tripped to cover the Spokane Comicon, and expanded the show to include five more hosts. 

Kevin himself has gone from comics commentator to comic creator, scripting a story for ONI Press's compilation JAM! Tales from the World of Roller Derby. Kevin interviewed me about raising a kid on comics for the Father's Day episode of the podcast (forward to 16:50 above if you just want my smilin' face); I figured turnabout was fair play.

What are the secret origins of the Backroom Comics podcast? 

While listening to a podcast during a stormy Seattle day I was struck by lightning, and instead of injuring me it gave me the super power to ramble on and on about Metamorpho, Jimmy Olsen and Archie Andrews for hours on end. 

What makes your show different from other comics podcasts?

That's something we've been struggling with a bit because there are quite a few very good comic related podcasts out there that cover anywhere from comics in general to ones that just focus on reading Silver Age Flash stories. But I think we differ in a few areas from a lot of the other 'casts out there. We've made a concerted effort to not do fan-boy-message-board ranting and instead replace it with thoughtful, fun discussions on the comics we dig. We'll still talk about problems we have with individual issues or writers but it'll never just be, "Frank Miller is sUX0R!!!!" Also, the interests and knowledge of everyone that we've added to the show is quite diverse...oooh wait, you're asking about this in the next question...

How did you assemble your collection of hosts, and what perspective does each of them bring to the table?

Would you believe Quiz Night at the Old Pequliar? Spencer (BRCP's producer, camera-person, editor extrordinaire) and I quickly realized that just having me blather on about comics with no one to bounce off of would get boring very quickly, so we asked Greg (who I had met at OP trivia and befriended a year earlier) to come on board and then Pete and Jason (who I met at trivia as well) followed about 6 months after that. Ahe was a friend of Greg's, and Chris (our newest addition) was an old friend of Pete's. Each of the crew certainly does have their own "super power" and if I were to assemble an super-team based on their attributes I think it'd be:... (more)

A "Banksy" stencil of undetermined provenance, courtesy of our Flickr Pool's +Russ

The other night I was standing in the alley by the Triple Door--I just was, okay!--and my friend was telling me how one time he stepped out there for a smoke after a show. A rat emerged from somewhere, zoomed around the corner, and darted toward the Triple Door doors. At the entryway, it hit a pillar and bounced off. It was dazed a few seconds, "just like a cartoon," then ran in.

"Anyway," recounted my friend, "I came back for another show and just as I was talking about how I'd seen this rat last time, another one ran right past us."

KING 5 reports that the anecdotal alley-rat population boom may be related, ironically, to the city's Clear Alleys program. The city got rid of dumpsters (to curb the drug-dealing and -taking that went on behind them, among other things), and now trash is put out in plastic bags--which the rats have learned to chew through. The result is not exactly the every-48-years black rat plague of northeast India, but easy access to food scraps is a proven way to get more rats in a hurry. (Switching to toter trash cans, especially for food waste, is the next action item.)

The area around First Avenue and Yesler is, according to Seattlepi.com commenters, rat central. "If you ever find yourself waiting for a bus at the stop [at First and Yesler], you can watch tons of them coming out of the storm drain in front of the bar," writes one. "I have been through Pioneer Square many times in the evening and many times I feel like I have to step over them to walk," is the unsettling description from another.... (more)