Throwback Thursday is when we trawl through the That's archives for a work of dazzling genius written at some point in our past. We then republish it. On a Thursday.
By Hart Huguet Hagerty and Tongfei Zhang
Springtime is celebrated the world over as a time of birth and renewal - eggs hatch, babies are born and creatures wake to a fresh season of life. For the rats of Shanghai, however, it is a different story, as it heralds a city-wide killing spree.
Late March until the end of April is prime rat elimination time, marked by the official Spring Rats Elimination Campaign hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Health Promotion Committee Office. The campaign, which also happens in October, kicks off with a mass extermination during the vermin’s breeding periods.
Just before the campaign begins, way up north in Yangpu District, Dr. Sun Aiguo of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of Yangpu is busy leading his brigade. He will help the district’s 12 communities educate its residents about rat prevention, and direct a small army to spray poison and set traps.
Up to 350 traps will be set weekly in each of the community’s lanes and buckets of poison will be dumped or sprayed in rat hangouts. For a month, normal eradication efforts are ramped into high gear; it’s expected that over 400 rats will be eliminated within each community before the campaign concludes.
They are very intelligent; some are as intelligent as a seven-year-old kid.
This is just one battle in a never-ending war of attrition though; even in off-peak rat season around 80 rats are killed weekly in each of Yangpu’s communities. The ongoing efforts have led to a 20 percent drop in rats in the sprawling residential area, mainly due to the immense and dedicated manpower; nearly 400 people work or volunteer as pest controllers across Yangpu alone.
A 400-soldier army may seem like a lot to reign in a lowly rodent, but the government has barely put a dent in the pest’s population density. A rat rule of thumb is to count four rats for every human being, which puts the critter’s city number up to 92 million. In a good year, Yangpu – human populations 1.3 million, so 5.2 million rats - will eradicate just 60,000.
While Dr. Sun doesn’t do a too much down and dirty ground work, he’s encountered plump rats up to 300 g on weight and 20 cm long. These, however, are mere mice compared to the bottom-feeding beasts eyeballed by municipal rat catcher Ren Changshun. He once trapped a whopping 500 g, 25 cm long rat on his rounds.
Ren says they’re easier to spot than to trap though, “Rats are the most difficult pests to catch,” he explains. “They are very intelligent; some are as intelligent as a seven-year-old kid.”
Dr. Sun agrees, “Rats are clever, they can understand you. They’re very closely connected to people. Anywhere there are human beings, there are rats.”
One thing rats can’t seem to outsmart though, is the Siberian weasel. Weasels are the secret weapon in the CDCP’s war on rats. Dr. Sun says he often transports caught weasels to rat-ridden communities to – literally - take a bite out of the problem.
Shanghai’s Filthy Four
Yellow-breasted rat, huangxiong xhu 黄胸鼠, has a healthy diet consisting of grains and nuts. According to Ren, “they like business buildings and hide above the ceilings.”
Brown rat, jejia shu 褐家鼠, originated in China before conquering the world. Ren says, “they like to get dirty; they play around the sewers all the time. They like greasy heavy dishes, that's why you can often find them in sewers around restaurants.” Dr. Sun says these meat-eaters have a favorite haunt: KFC.
House mouse, xiaojia shu 小家鼠, mainly eats cake or bread crumbs. They are also used as lab mice. Ren says they’re “more domestic; they like to play house with human beings.”
Chinese striped hamster, heixiancang shu 黑线仓鼠, is found in more rural areas and eats crops from gardens and farms.
This article first appeared in the April 2012 issue of That's Shanghai. To see more Throwback Thursday posts, click here.
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