KITCHENER — You know the rats are tough when the Pied Piper and his deer-hunting neighbour can't get rid of them.

"It's embarrassing that we're living in an area that has a rat problem," Patrick Anderson said Friday.

And a little ironic considering he played the lead role in the Pied Piper of Hamelin in a grade school Christmas play some 40 years ago.

The rat problem on Reistview Street — on the edge of the countryside in the relatively new suburbs just north of Bleams Road and not far from Activa Avenue — started last summer and shows no signs of stopping.

Asked if he is ready to reprise his role as the Pied Piper, Anderson, 47, said: "I'm not sure. I'd have to break out my recorder."

His neighbour, Sarah Moerbeek, a 39-year-old stay-at-home mom and deer hunter, is not squeamish — "I can field-dress a deer" — but she's worried the health of her two young children could be endangered by the vermin.

"I just want them dead and gone," she said.

"We had one last year. It was gross. It (the trap) snapped its face, but it didn't kill it. It left a blood trail and you could see everywhere the rat tried to get into the house. Even up the front door you could see blood and claw marks."

Moerbeek first noticed rats last summer when her dog dug a hole in the backyard and she saw a critter.

"We thought maybe it was a mole, so we set a live trap out that night to see and we caught a rat — a big one."

She said it was about 23 centimetres long, not including the tail.

Moerbeek said other neighbours have seen rats running across the street and the problem also exists on nearby Henhoeffer Crescent.

Anderson, who works in information technology with the provincial government, said he trapped more than 20 rats in a six-week period last fall. Once, he caught two rats at the same time in one trap.

With the snow gone, the traps are back.

"They're springing them now, but I'm not catching them," Anderson said.

"They get smart," Moerbeek said.

They both saw a dead rat on nearby Max Becker Drive a few days ago. And Moerbeek has been seeing tracks in her backyard.

Some rats are brave.

"I had one late last fall sunning itself on my air conditioner," Moerbeek said. "Just hanging out. They're brazen."

One of her neighbours saw a chipmunk with what she thought was a mole.

"It was a rat. The chipmunk was playing with the rat in broad daylight. Research says when you see them in the day, you've got a problem."

Anderson said he got no help from the City of Kitchener.

"Their response was 'Well, we'll send somebody out to possibly check and drop some bait into the sewers, but other than that there's really not much we can do.' They said 'It's your responsibility. Let your neighbours know, clean up, get rid of water sources and whatever.'

"It's my responsibility to follow up with everyone in the neighbourhood?" Anderson said. "I'm not going to go door to door. I'm not going to deliver flyers telling everybody there's a rat problem in the neighbourhood."

A rat problem is not something you want to announce to everyone, Moerbeek said. "It's embarrassing."

Ward 5 Coun. Kelly Galloway-Sealock said Friday she had not heard of the problem.

"This is brand new to me," she said.

She said she would be happy to talk to Anderson and Moerbeek.

"Absolutely. I could contact staff and have somebody try to investigate if there's a reason … If the sewer system's backed up there, then we can try and address it. But until we know the cause of it and why they're in that area, we probably can't do much about it."

Anderson and Moerbeek want someone from the city to go door to door to tell people about the rat problem to launch a neighbourhood-wide effort.

"You'd think that people would want to make sure it's controlled," Anderson said. "If you're trying to sell your house and people find out there's rats in that neighbourhood, how's that going to affect the sale of your house?"

Calling an exterminator would be pointless, Anderson said, unless everyone fights back.

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"I think it's just going to be an expense that's not going to solve the problem," he said.

Anderson suspects the rats came from a new housing development nearby.

"They've plowed an entire field — it's a huge field. Anything living in that field is going to move."

He worries the rat problem will spread.

"You've got to take it seriously or else they're just going to keep multiplying and multiplying … Are there colonies of them somewhere? I don't know. I don't want it to be where it just gets so bad that you can't leave your garage door open."

The biggest fear is rats getting inside.

"Eventually they'll get into the house," Moerbeek said. "They find a way."

The problem has been expensive and time-consuming.

"We keep pulling the deck boards up. You just get paranoid because you don't want them getting in the house," Moerbeek said. "Then setting the traps and cleaning the traps and getting rid of the rats. It is non-stop stress for me.

"It's just work that you shouldn't have to do. That's what upset us when the city wouldn't help. Just help us. That's all we're asking for."

Anderson reiterated the embarrassment factor.

"It's a little frustrating when you have people over and you're sitting on your deck and they look over and say, 'Oh, what are all the big traps for?' 'Uh, for rats.' "

Moerbeek has used extreme measures.

"We smoke-bombed anything that looked like a burrow. They're like little sticks of dynamite. It's like a sulphur gas and you put the wick in and bury it down in the hole and then light it and cover the hole in. It suffocates them inside the hole. Works great for groundhogs and it does for rats, too."

Except it didn't get rid of the rats.

The two aren't sure what they'll do next.

"It would be nice if the coyotes came back," Anderson said.

Moerbeek has another idea.

"I'm going to get a pet possum because possums love rats," she said with a laugh. "Get a little leash and let it run around."

- No rat infestation, says public health