The rats in the poster are gnawing relentlessly, intent on chomping through a chunk of Alberta. And just in case the image is too subtle, the words are not: Kill Rats At Sight!

For half a century, Alberta has been rat-free, the only province to ban the animal after legislation in the 1950s aggressively heralded a Rat Patrol to keep the rodents out. Posters urged Albertans to stamp out any rats they found.

But that vigilance hasn’t always been successful. Last week, Calgary officials found three rodents in two residences.

Owning a pet rat is a serious offence in Calgary with fines of up to $5,000 per rodent. The rats face euthanasia or deportation.

“I’m not sure why people would have rats — it’s one of those pets people have. Being a dog owner, I don’t get it but some people consider them good pets,” said Greg Steinraths, manager of strategic services for animal and bylaw services. “These were pet rats kept in cages and our officers had to educate the owners who immediately turned the rats over to them.”

Greg Steinraths, manager of strategic services for animal and bylaw services, said the rats were brought to Calgary from B.C. and bylaw officers found out about the pets after callers to the city’s information line ratted out their neighbours.

One home was found to have one rat and the other had two rats as pets.

The city gets about 100 calls a year by residents raising their concerns about rats. Most of those rat sightings are actually muskrats, said Steinraths.

The recovered rats will be sent to B.C. after a rescue group offered to take them in, a move that hasn’t always been beneficial to rescue organizations.

Lizzy O’Sullivan, a rat breeder who also works in rat rescues, said Monday that some people get mighty incensed about the notion that these rodents deserve to be placed in homes.

In 2010, Mathilda, a pet rat taken to Alberta after its family moved to the province from B.C. made headlines when she was discovered in Calgary and deported back west.

Volunteers from the rescue organization, Little Mischief Rescue Society, received death threats from people angry that money was being spent on repatriating the rat.

O’Sullivan said Alberta’s decades-old rat eradication policies doesn’t make any sense.

“It just comes from ignorance and people not understanding the difference between a domestic pet and a wild animal,” she said. “Basically a domesticated rat is like a little dog.”

The province banned rats after a rat infestation was discovered in central Alberta in the 1950s and concerns rose about the damage rats would have on agriculture, rubbish, lumber, outbuildings and machinery.

Alberta believes an estimated $1 billion has been saved over the past 50 years in property damage, livestock losses, human suffering and health care as well as lost and contaminated food from being in contact with rats.

A pair of rats sheltered from weather and predators could produce as many as 15,000 more rats every year.

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LeeAnn Boardman who founded RatsPacNW, a social group for rat owners based in Washington State, said increasingly there are more people owning domesticated rats as pets.

“They’re good pets, highly social. It’s almost like having a small dog. They’re very friendly and it’s just an alternative to having a larger pet,” she said Monday.

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