Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.06.2014, Blaðsíða 12

12
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2014
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News | Rodents
Except in Iceland, it seems, where the
last couple of months have seen an in-
crease in rat sightings and rat bites, most
notably in cases where people (kids) have
tried to catch or pet the creatures when
they encounter them. This has gotten to
be enough of a problem that in early June
the City of Reykjavík’s Pest Control office
issued a public advisory, warning resi-
dents to keep their distance from any rats
they might encounter. “If you reach out to
them, and try to touch them or pet them,
they will definitely bite you,” Operations
Officer Ómar Dabney explained in a me-
dia announcement.
Watch Out For Rats, They
Could Bite You
The first newsworthy incident came
last month when 15-year-old Kolbeinn
Egill Þrastarson was bitten by a rat in the
basement of his home on the west side of
Reykjavík. “The rat hopped on my hand,
dangled off my finger, hissed at me and
then hopped up the steps,” he told lo-
cal news site Vísir. Shortly after, Kolbe-
inn was joined by a
friend and together
the pair was able
to capture the rat,
which had appar-
ently been “torment-
ing” the residents of
his building all day.
Kolbeinn was then
taken to the hospital for a tetanus shot
and antibiotics.
Following Kolbeinn’s run-in, a baby
rat was spotted in the same neighbour-
hood, this time at the Vesturbærjarlaug
pool. As it was 11:00 on a Sunday at the
time of the sighting, the pool was quite
busy, with about 200 guests in atten-
dance. The facilities were immediately
closed and there was an “orderly” evacu-
ation of everyone present—standard
procedure in case of any possibly unsafe
conditions, says pool manager Hafliði
Haldórsson. The City’s
Pest Control office
was then called to the
scene where they laid
traps and continued
their search for the
ratlet (never found, in-
cidentally) until 4:00
PM.
That very same afternoon, a young
girl named Ragnheiður Kolfinna Mag-
núsdóttir suffered a bite after trying to
approach a rat. “I bent down and look at
it,” she told Vísir reporters. “Then it came
and bit me.”
“Watch out for rats,” Ragnheiður
warned. “They could bite you.”
Kids Think They Are Nice
Fluffy Animals
Fear not, however, Reykjavík isn’t over-
run with ravenous rodents—far from it,
according to people in the know. “There
are not a lot of rats here,” says Ólafur
Sigurðsson of Meindýraeyðing Reyk-
javíkur (“Reykjavík Pest Control”).
“We have very good conditions here
compared to many other cities.” Óla-
fur credits the recent rat incidents
to the increase in construction work
around the city now that the weather
has gotten warmer. The rats live in
the sewer system and the pipes and so
when there is construction, he says,
they surface in greater numbers.
Exterminator Óli Reynisson of
Meindýraeyðing Óla (“Óli’s Pest Con-
trol”) agrees with Ólafur—there re-
ally isn’t a major rat problem in Reyk-
javík. “The rats have
been eating poison
that’s been laid out
for them, and when
they are dying, they
come out,” he says.
(Anyone who no-
tices rat corpses ly-
ing about is encour-
aged to call the city
Pest Control office
to have these col-
lected and disposed
of properly).
But even if
there’s no epidemic
to speak of, it’s per-
haps no wonder
that rat sightings
give many people,
particularly those
of older genera-
tions, the shivers. “People are afraid
of them,” Ómar Dabney says. “From
the old days, because they brought
the Black Death, and that’s still on
the minds of people here in Iceland.”
But, Ómar assures us, these fears are
unfounded today: “There are very few
parasites on the rats of Reykjavík.”
[And actually, for the record, scien-
tists today no longer believe that the
Black Death was transmitted by rats.]
If anything seems to confirm for
certain that there isn’t a humongous
rat infestation in Iceland, it’s prob-
ably the fact that kids aren’t familiar
enough with rats to know better than
to try and touch them. Extermina-
tor Ólafur Sigurðsson puts this into a
useful context. “In the old days when
the British soldiers left, they left these
shacks [Nissen or Quonset Huts] be-
hind,” he says, and rats flourished
around these impromptu dwellings.
“There were so many rats in Reykja-
vík that kids knew how to kill them
and fight them. Now things have been
so peaceful that they just think rats
are nice and fluffy animals.”
101 Rats!
Reykjavík’s rodents make headlines
Words by Larissa Kyzer
Photo by Hrefna Sigurðardóttir
As a general rule, city-dwellers tend to nurse an active suspicion of, if not downright animosity, against rats. In many ways,
this is unfair—rats have been shown to be highly intelligent animals, demonstrating the ability to strategise, show empa-
thy and compassion and, according to a study published this month by researchers at the University of Minnesota, even
feel regret over bad decisions. Nevertheless, people frequently think of rats as filthy vermin, harbingers of disease (admit-
tedly, they can transmit a variety of these) that should be completely eradicated, or at the very least, assiduously avoided.
“The rat hopped on
my hand, dangled off
my finger, hissed at me
and then hopped up
the steps.”
There are two species of rats in
Iceland: Rattus norvegicus (the
brown/Norwegian rat), and the
far less common Rattus rattus
(the black/roof rat).
The oldest known rat skeleton
to be unearthed in Iceland was
found at the President's residence
as Bessastaðir, and is suspected
to date back to the 18th century,
but this skeleton is considered an
anomaly: some scholars believe
that Iceland was entirely rat-free
throughout the Middle Ages.
INFO