Why Rats Keep Outsmarting Us

You know the kind of job.

Same account for years. Same alleys, same basement, same complaints.

You’ve sealed gaps, fixed doors, moved dumpsters, set traps, rotated tools. The problem gets better… then it’s back. The tenants are frustrated. The managers are frustrated.

You’re frustrated.

From the outside it can look like “someone isn’t doing their job.” From the inside, it feels more like we’re being asked to solve a problem nobody fully understands.

This piece is about that feeling, and about why it’s not a failure on your side when rats keep breaking the rules you have learned.

“We’re doing everything right. Why is this still happening?”

For decades, rats have been some of the most studied animals in the world.

We know a lot from laboratories: how rats learn in mazes, how they respond to new foods, how diseases behave in controlled settings. But lab rats are raised in clean, controlled conditions.

City rats are not.

The rats you deal with are:

• living behind walls, under sidewalks, in aging infrastructure;
• feeding from trash, pet food, grain, and who-knows-what;
• moving through a maze of public and private spaces you don’t fully control.

Researchers have a hard time getting repeated access to those places. Property owners and agencies are under pressure to show quick results. Nobody gets rewarded for leaving rats in place longer so someone can study them.

So we end up in a strange situation:

• PMPs are asked to “fix” chronic rat problems.
• Public health wants long-term, fair outcomes.
• Researchers are still missing basic field data on how city rats actually behave.

You feel that gap every time you walk into a site that “should” be under control, but isn’t.

The invisible part of the job: a knowledge problem, not just a service problem

On paper, a lot of accounts look simple:

• too much food available;
• too many harborage spots;
• too many entry points.

Control the food, tighten the structure, deploy devices, maybe use rodenticides where appropriate, and you are done.

In the real world, there are extra questions that are still hard to answer:

• When are the rats actually moving through this space?
• Which routes do they favor when conditions change?
• How does the group react when a dominant animal is removed?
• What happens when construction starts two blocks away?

Technicians and operators notice patterns, but there isn’t always a place to capture and share those observations in a way that turns them into real evidence.

So every team re-learns the same lessons, site by site, city by city. A lot of that knowledge stays in notebooks, text threads, and people’s heads.

That is the “wicked” part of the rat problem. It is not just about better tools. It is about the fact that we need more knowledge and data, and no single company, agency, or researcher has the whole picture.

Where you fit in: not just “the exterminator,” but the field expert

If you work in rodent control, you are already doing small experiments every day:

• You change placement and watch what happens.
• You switch devices and track callbacks.
• You work out which accounts fight back hardest when the weather shifts.

Most of that is not called “research.” It is just you trying to get the job done.

The idea behind projects like EUREKA is simple:

What if the work you are already doing could count twice –
once as service, and once as data we can all learn from?

That does not mean turning your routes into a science fair.

It means:

• logging what you see in a structured way instead of only in free text;
• capturing where devices actually are, not just how many you used;
• noting patterns at the sites that never quite clear, instead of only recording the actions you took.

Done right, that kind of logging does not slow you down much. But it gives researchers and agencies something they almost never get: consistent, ground-level information from real accounts over time.

“But what do I get out of it?”

The honest question.

You already juggle callbacks, staff shortages, equipment, regulations, customer expectations, and your own safety. Why add “help build a better knowledge base” on top of that?

A few reasons that can matter in practice:

Better tools over time
When researchers can actually see what is happening on your kinds of accounts, they can stop guessing based on lab rats and start building tools around what you deal with daily.

Stronger story for your clients
Being able to say “here is what we have learned from hundreds of sites like yours” is different from “here is what the label says.” Data-backed guidance builds trust.

Recognition as more than a vendor
When PMPs are treated as partners in public health and urban planning, it changes how people talk to you and how they listen.

Less wasted effort
The more we collectively understand about when and why rats bounce back, the less time you spend repeating the same short-term fix for the same chronic problem.

None of that removes the pressure of tonight’s inspection or this week’s emergency call. But it does mean that some of the energy you already spend can start paying off beyond that single job.

What “participating in the science” actually looks like

We are not talking about turning every technician into a PhD or asking your clients to live with uncontrolled rats.

It is more down to earth than that.

 

Clean, consistent logs
Using a digital log or app so that catches, sightings, and conditions are recorded in a standard way, instead of getting buried in paper slips or scattered notes.

A few “special” sites
Choosing some of your hardest accounts – where everyone agrees the usual recipe is not enough – and treating them as joint projects between you, your client, and a research or public health partner.

Clear boundaries and protections
Making sure there are written agreements about:

• how long pre-treatment monitoring will last;
• how data from the site can be used and shared;
• what participation does not mean (no one wants a site publicly shamed for helping).

 

EUREKA’s role is to provide the structure for that: the logging tools, the data standards, the connections to researchers and agencies, and the help thinking through incentives so that saying “yes” is safe and rational, not a gamble.

A different way to look at your next tough account

A different way to look at your next tough account

The next time you walk into a building that has “always” had rats, it is natural to feel that familiar mix of determination and dread.

Try adding one more thought:

“What could we learn here that would help us and others,
if this account did not have to stand alone?”

Maybe that means tightening up how you log what you already see.

Maybe it means nominating the site for a pilot project.

Maybe it just means being open, when someone asks, to letting your day-to-day experience count as part of a bigger effort to understand city rats for real.

Rats are not going away. But your work already holds many of the clues we have been missing. The point of EUREKA is not to tell you how to do your job. It is to make sure the effort you are putting in can finally add up to more than one account at a time.

This content was inspired by Parsons et al. (2017):

Parsons, M. H., Banks, P. B., Deutsch, M. A., Corrigan, R. F. and Munshi-South, J. (2017). Trends in urban rat ecology: a framework to define the prevailing knowledge gaps and incentives for academia, pest management professionals (PMPs) and public health agencies to participate. Journal of Urban Ecology, 3, jux005.

Disclaimer :
This project was funded by the Department of Pesticide Regulation. The contents may not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the State of California.