After all, mice don’t like being hot and heavy.
As a bit of relief from the unbearable humidity and miserable, nasty, awful heatwave that has hit The Baked Apple this summer, news has come that the scorching temperatures are suddenly wreaking havoc on the city’s rat reproduction rates.
Simply put, as temperatures rise, the city’s most irritating pests become less romantic.
“Anything that stresses them out is good for our business,” said Kathleen Corradi, New York City’s rodent control director. He told the New York Times.
“Stressed rats are less likely to reproduce, while happy rats are more likely to reproduce, so much so that scientifically it is impossible to eradicate them even if you try,” the rat exterminator explained.
But don’t celebrate too soon.
Gorgeous, warmer summer days, like Friday’s much-anticipated mild weather, will get rodents in the mood to scurry about amongst themselves, experts have warned.
Randy Byleski, president of GoGreen, a pest control company based in Vancouver, Canada, detailed the situation: LinkedIn Earlier this year.
Essentially, warm weather, minus the face-melting heat, is believed to be a “favourable” environment for the survival of offspring, and experts said, “mice are known to breed more frequently in warm weather conditions.”
Warmer days “provide rats with greater access to food, water and shelter — all of which are essential for breeding and raising young” than hot days, he continued.
Experts say the best thing people can do to curb the out-of-control problem this summer is to “block entry points, eliminate food sources and use traps and bait.”
Or we can only hope for another heatwave.
The news comes on the heels of it being revealed that California and many other states rank higher than New York when it comes to rat infestations — at least, that’s according to Yelp, which recently conducted a survey on how people in need of pest control are using the popular user review site.
