Ratastic News Week – Rats all over Edition

David Bennett

Ratastic Newsflash for week of March 4th, 2019: Rats all over Edition

Scientific study to understand Rats details embedded link. Scorsese’s “The Departed” movie ending, watch both versions albeit gruesome in link. Urban rat issues is Dublin, Ireland. Crouton, chips and popcorn loving rats in Las Vegas store and more… linked news report.

Last week’s quiz question! What’s a rat who isn’t really a rat weighs 4 times more than a rat? Songs have been sung about them.

Answer: Musk Rat

This week’s quiz question: If you suffer from Musophobia, what are you afraid of?

Scientists Develop Dr. Doolittle-like Software to Translate Rat and Mouse Squeaks

DeepSqueak is its name, and its intriguing, “DeepThroat” sounding name is meant to compile rodent squeaks and noises and develop what its creators say would be a “Rosetta stone” so that researchers would better understand what they are saying to one another. Dr. Doolittle has nothing on this software! Rat communication takes place mostly on an ultrasonic level that humans cannot hear. The Verge goes on: “Mice and rats are foundational to modern medical science. By one tally, mouse and rat studies have earned around 75 Nobel Prizes in health and physiology. Rats, in particular, are smart and communicative, and understanding their communication could add a useful data layer to countless studies. If a rat avoids tasty sugar water in an experiment, for example, is it demurring because it’s happily distracted or because it’s too anxious to take a drink?” Developing a patient/doctor relationship with rats and mice could be the future! Perhaps we could make diplomats of them too and work towards world peace?

Rat Control in the Movie “The Departed?”

Some may think the ending of Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” with Matt Damon and

Leonardo DiCaprio is—well—cheesy. As Maxim notes, the movie is about “a mobbed-up mole in the Massachusetts State Police (Matt Damon) and an undercover agent (Leonardo DiCaprio) assigned to infiltrate an Irish organized crime syndicate in Boston. Time ticks as they scramble to uncover the one another’s true identity—it’s a sort of rat race, if you will.” Well, director Adam Sacks thought that the time had come to do some rat control in the final scene of the movie, which—because it’s a mobster film, set up the scene for the “rat” of the film by showing a rat scurrying across an apartment balcony. So Sacks has set up a Kickstarter campaign to digitally erase the rat out of the film. However, editor Martin Lacroix beat him to it. He found as in real life, the rat wasn’t so easy to—eradicate. “Fun fact: the view out the window was digitally inserted in the film,” LaCroix tweeted, “which made tracking the shot in order to remove the rat more difficult than you’d expect because the original motion matching… wasn’t quite perfect.” But LaCroix thinks removing the rat is disrespectful to Scorsese’s legacy and he doesn’t think it needs to be removed. That might be the first time—well wait—since the animal rights folks in Paris, anyway,that somebody doesn’t want to get rid of the rat!

Meanwhile, in Ireland….rat infestation in council housing has mum and 3 children trying to flee

A mother living in an apartment for 8 years has called pest control about 8 times during those years to get rid of ants and beetles, and now as of two weeks ago, rats. The problem has gotten so bad with rat poop and urine everywhere that she’s had to take the kids and flee the premises. The Irish Sun reports: “The part-time worker at Paddy Power on Abbey Street has put in a request to the council asking to be moved to another two-bed flat. In response, Jade was told she was entitled to a three-bed home, but could be waiting between 14 and 17 years. A spokesperson for the Dublin City Council claims there are isolated incidences of rats, but it is not an infestation. Maybe not yet….

Las Vegas, bargain shopping rats spotted at 99 Cent Only Store!

A while back, a 99 Cents Only store discovered a rat and took a baseball bat after it—and the folks at the location in Las Vegas are probably wishing they’d have thought to keep one on hand the next time they needed to dispatch a rat home run! KTNV.com reports that a rat was spotted in the Las Vegas location leaving feces behind in a back area next to—ew—the produce section! Inspectors found poop and urine on store shelves, and our four-legged bargain shoppers even dined on cheap noodles and beans! They opened up and gnawed on multiple packages of food and there may have been a turf war between the neighborhood mice—10 of those were found dead along the walls in the store. The store manager says that the entire store has been spiffed up and cleaned and all is well now so no fear!

Positive steps, issue addressed including exclusion. Las Vegas we can help!

Notice in majority of news report videos and images show the usage of short life plastic consumer grade traps, understanding depending on application its prudent to have multiple methods for Pest control, please take 3 minutes review the Rodent trap ROI calculator video befitting not only reduction on business costs also helping our environment utilizing long life galvanized steel commercial grade traps that will not end up in a landfill.