In Neuilly-sur-Marne, rat hunting has taken on an innovative look. The city and individuals are calling on a company that uses dogs and ferrets to deal with rodents.
To combat the proliferation of rats in the town of Neuilly-sur-Marne (Seine-Saint-Denis), a “more innovative and natural” solution than traditional pest control is being developed. A company using dogs and ferrets is very successful in the town.
The missions revolve around two axes with the identification of places of passage and galleries used by rodents then tracking them down. “There must be a presence there,” notes Nicolas, owner of a fox terrier trained to track rats. On that day, all the common areas of the building are scrutinized for the peace of residents.
“When you see a lot of them it’s still scary”
“Many tenants told us that they couldn’t open the window because they saw rats passing by,” says Patrick, the building’s caretaker. “When you see one, it’s okay, but when you see a lot of them it’s still scary.”
In the city, Nicolas and his dogs are in great demand. Called to a farm, the entrepreneur uses ferrets who will invade the burrows in which the rats can hide. “The ferret tries to get the rats out”, then comes the turn of the dogs who “must catch the rats once they have come out”.
A more efficient solution
Teamwork and a primitive method which proves to be very effective and ecological and which convinced the mayor of the city. “What we said to ourselves was that we had to go beyond the pest control operations that we have always been carrying out and try a more innovative and more natural solution,” explains Zartoshte Bakhtiari.
“When we put products in small black boxes that we place everywhere, we find relatively few corpses. There, in a few minutes, you find yourself with dozens, even hundreds of rats caught by dogs.”
During the mission to the farm, the dogs and ferrets operated for an hour and a half. In total, more than 70 rats were neutralized.
Agathe Albouy and Bettina De Guglielmo
