Toronto does not have a rat problem.

The spectre was raised last week when a pest control company reported that an army of rats fleeing construction at Union Station was invading downtown homes and businesses.

The company, which does not service Union Station, made its declaration after receiving “a lot more calls” from area residents and business owners.

But TTC spokesman Brad Ross said the agency hasn’t noticed any more rats than usual, and the city’s pest control contractor, Orkin, actually reported a “slight decrease” in the number of rats around Union Station, said city spokeswoman Tammy Robbinson.

Toronto is a big city packed with people, garbage and food, but apart from a few high-profile restaurant closures and rat-infested homes, residents have little to fear from their rodent neighbours, city officials say.

“Even squirrel bites are more common than rat bites,” said George Matsumura, head of the city’s rabies control program.

Matsumura said he could “probably count on one hand the number of rat bites we’ve had” since he started in the public health department in 1978.

Even if all of those rat attacks had happened in 2013, a person would still be more than twice as likely to be struck by lightning that year than bitten by a rat.

Toronto Public Health tracks dog, cat and raccoon bites and scratches, but not rats. They’re almost non-existent, Matsumura said, and are counted in the same category as mice and gerbil attacks: “other”.

It’s rare to see people enjoying a sunny day in High Park or Trinity-Bellwoods while throwing scraps of bread to rats, Matsumura noted, which is how most squirrel bites occur.

In 2014, four people reported squirrel bites and one reported being scratched. Last year, 10 people reported bites, and no scratches — 0.4 per cent of the 2,450 animal-human encounter injuries reported last year.

There have been no cases of rabies in Toronto in at least 35 years and no domestic animals carry the disease.

While Toronto does have rats, no one knows exactly how many.

“Typically, they don’t bother the public,” said city spokeswoman Jackie DeSouza. “They’re shy and stay out of sight.”

Rats have always lived around Union Station and near St. Lawrence Market, where they eat commercial garbage and take advantage of the many people who feed pigeons, Robbinson said.

Ross said the TTC tries to reduce the rodent population with poison and by clearing garbage and food — but hasn’t had to rely on rat sterilization as is the case in New York City.

Inside the transit system, there seem to be few rats near areas frequented by people, said Ross, who could not recall ever seeing a rat on a subway platform.

Mice, which generally do not carry the same cornucopia of disease as rats, are more common but still rare, Ross said.

That may mean that there are few rodents in the system or that they prefer to lurk out of sight, further down in the tunnels, he said.

Toronto Public Health deals with rodents in restaurants and other food establishments. From the beginning of 2013 until November 2014, it has closed five restaurants and bakeries because of rat infestations. Four were in the Kensington-Chinatown area.

Outside of food services and public transit, the city rarely gets involved in rat control.

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In severe cases, which typically involve hoarding or abandoned properties, the city will intervene, Robbinson said.

The city doesn’t have any way to measure or track the rat population, DeSouza explained — and there may not be a practical way to do so.

“Animals are terrible survey respondents,” wrote Columbia University doctoral student Jonathan Auerbach, who published a recent statistical analysis of New York City’s rodent population.

The oft-repeated statistic of one rat for each of New York’s eight million residents has never been proven, although the city also has no way to count the creatures.

Auerbach used records of 311 calls to estimate the number of properties infested with rats and their approximate population. He concluded there are probably two million rats in the city, one for every four New Yorkers.

In the paper, he suggests that the most accurate way to count a city’s rat population would be to tag and release a large number of rats, wait for them to spread into the wild population and then recapture a random sample.

The total population could then be extrapolated from the percentage of tagged rats found in that sample.

But in a city that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of rodents, releasing thousands just to find out how many more remain to be eliminated would be a hard sell, Auerbach wrote.

“I know, because I asked.”

Toronto has experienced rat infestations in the past.

In summer of 1968, rats were “disgusting and terrorizing residents” near Bathurst St. and Steeles Ave. W.

“Housewives,” the Toronto Daily Star reported, were particularly alarmed by the rats, who moved into the area after being disturbed by residential construction.

At the time, the city said the infestation “might be a little heavier this year,” but was not unusual.

A “plague” of rats also infested three streets in North York in April 1968.

Residents reported rats “sitting in the ditches or walking up the sidewalks in daylight without fear.”

Marnie Kates of North York told the Star that mice in the area were “so bold they would watch television with her.”

In 1982, steroid-addled, dachshund-sized rats fed on Torontonians in the locally made film Deadly Eyes.

By November 1971, the situation was dire on the waterfront, where the city was fighting a “losing battle against the wily rat,” the Star reported.

Wrote reporter Sidney Katz: “Twentieth-century man has been able to land on the moon, banish polio and perform heart transplants, but he hasn’t been able to stamp out the furry pest.”

With files from Astrid Lange and Rick Sznajder in the Toronto Star Library

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