It is nightfall in Paris’s chic Marais district – one of the city’s oldest quarters – and there is a rustling in the autumn leaves of the local park. With a slither of tails, the rats emerge from the shadows to scurry across the pavement, hugging the walls of buildings for a collective raid on the nearest rubbish bins.



There are few people about at this hour, but those who spot the rodents suppress a shocked squeal.



“I’ve lived here for 10 years and have never seen rats in this square before. But now they are very present. You rarely see them during the day, but after dusk they run out along the pavement into the street to raid the litter bins,” said one local resident who watched half a dozen rodents scamper away as she unlocked her front door.

The next day on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Anne-Laure is out walking her dog. It is a clear, crisp morning and the rodents are out in force, seemingly undaunted by daylight or passersby.

“We’re used to the rats by now. They come, they go. They’re not really any worse than the pigeons, but it’s unnerving to see so many of them,” Anne-Laure said.



Parisians have lived with rats since the city was founded. If there’s a bustle in the hedgerow, no need to be alarmed; chances are it is a rodent. At dusk they can be spotted across the city, even on the world’s most famous boulevard, the Champs Elysées, dashing across a pavement or parkways. Even in the metro, they scamper along the platforms searching for food left by passengers or the homeless spending the night in the subway network.

Mostly they stick to the sewers, but recently they have started coming to the surface in increasing numbers, attracted by casually, or even deliberately, thrown food. The Disney film Ratatouille tried to make them more sympathetic, though the scene where thousands tumble through the shattered ceiling on to the head of an elderly pensioner remains a haunting one, and its star, Rémy, was a master of French haute cuisine. But as the credits rolled, it was hard to escape the fact that, sympathetic or not, Rémy was still a rat.

Now that Paris’s rat population is thought to have exploded to more than 4m – about two for every one of the 2.3 million city dwellers – Paris city hall has embarked on yet another campaign to eradicate a seasonal plague.



Rats scurry across the lawn in the Saint Jacques Tower park in the centre of Paris. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

Dr Georges Salines, head of the Paris environmental service that deals with rats, says the fight to control them has been hit partly by a change in European regulations concerning poisons. “For example, we can no longer put the poisoned grains that we used before at the exit of their burrows in parks,” he told journalists.

Nine city parks were closed at the end of November for a “de-ratting programme”. Officials and health experts hope by removing humans, who leave food and detritus in the park on which the rodents feed, the animals will be attracted to the poison baits. Le Parisien reported that a pair of breeding rats could produce 936 offspring in two years.



City hall insists the rodent population has not actually exploded, but the media has made Parisiens more aware of them. A spokeswoman said the problem was “no worse than before”.

“It’s been in the media and they’ve been seen in tourist areas like the Champs Elysées, so everyone thinks there are more. We’ve closed the parks because, believe or not, people actually feed them.”



Pierre Falgayrac, an independent expert who has spent hours in the Paris sewers studying rats, told Le Monde that there was nothing to be alarmed about.



“In major cities like Paris, built in the 19th century and blessed with sewers at the heart of the city, there are around 1.75 rats per inhabitant. It’s when the density increases to more than two rats per inhabitant that the problems start.”



Falgayrac says rats needs three things to thrive: water, food and a place to build a nest. If deprived of one they cease to breed. “They’re not invaders or conquerers ... its life space is limited to 20 square metres and it will spend 75% of its life in that space. We have to balance the fear-mongering about rats. They’re not intrinsically aggressive ... they’re mostly gentle, peaceful and fearful.

“Once the population is down to less than one rat per head of population, nobody will notice them,” Falgayrac said.



Meanwhile, Parisien Jo Benchetrit has launched a petition called “Stop the Rat Genocide” and has denounced city hall’s “rat phobia”.

