Cyprus Mail 10 April 2020 - by Annette Chrysostomou
Cypriot authorities on Thursday laid to rest any notion of a ‘rat-pocalypse’ following reports abroad that the lockdown of restaurants and lack of littering due to movement restrictions would bring hungry rodents on to the streets or being drawn more to homes.
Some international reports said there would be a problem with rats and other rodents due to the coronavirus, as they cannot find food normally available from restaurants and people throwing leftover food in rubbish bins.
“When you have a colony of rats on a block that has been depending on tourists littering and lots of trash put out at night – it could be [Washington] DC, it could be New York – any place where rats have been depending the easy handouts, and that disappears, then they don’t know what to do,” Urban rodentologist Robert Corrigan told the BBC.
But the situation is not that simple, at least not in Cyprus, Haris Nicolaou from the forestry department who advises the ministry on mammals said on Thursday.
“In Cyprus we don’t have street restaurants like in New York” he said. “Rats in Cyprus can pick food from the green garbage bins next to the roads. As well, don’t forget they are omnivores. They eat wheat, and insects, and I saw one eating a snail the other day!”
They may well venture out more, both during the day and during the night, simply because there are less pedestrians and cars around, which is why people may conclude there are more of the rodents.
“This concerns all wild animals, they feel more comfortable and less shy. Rats are very adaptable animals. There is no way to say how they will react. They might move to other areas where there is food such as fields.”
Exterminator company Atom provided another point on how the rat numbers are affected by the coronavirus.
Yes, they said, the closure of restaurants affects the rodents, but it is not that there are more of them desperate for food and driven to come closer to homes and garbage.
The restaurants not only involuntarily feed them, but they also control them, as they are the ones who hire the exterminators to kill them.
It was reported in Cyprus this week that there were more rats than ever, especially in the Nicosia municipalities of Engomi and Strovolos, something the mayors of the two municipalities have denied.
“There are as many as in past years, and we are doing our normal campaign to clean fields as we do every year at this time,” Engomi mayor Zacharias Kyriacou said.
Strovolos mayor Andreas Charalambous confirmed this, adding “why should there be more in Engomi and Strovolos and not in Lakatamia for example, rats don’t know such municipal boundaries.” There may well be more rodents in recent years due to heavy rains which have encouraged the growth of wild vegetation.
