Dear all,
We are writing with an update on rat abatement.
Bottom line: please exercise caution in the garden. Keep pets out and refrain from eating food grown in the garden until we have the rat situation better under control.
We’ve been flooding, treating, and collapsing holes on a very regular basis and we now know where rats are living and which holes are just transit holes.
The City is sending an exterminator and that exterminator has been putting poison bait in the holes. Digging around could uproot poison.
We are continuing to maintain the bait stations in there with Broadway Exterminating. They are catching lots of rats. Broadway did an extensive treatment with dry ice, but because many of the holes are just transit holes it did not seem like we got many rats that way.
Please note, when rats are being poisoned you don’t want to eat food that the rats have touched.
We put mesh on the west side in the western-most rock bed. The mesh seems to be helping where it has been put down. But we can’t do it to the other rock bed in the west garden because there are just too many rocks in there; same for the rock bed along the wall in the east garden. We are trying to treat and close off those beds instead. Please leave them alone for now as the exterminators are dealing with them.
There is a major rats nest under the gazebo. We are going to come up with a plan. Do not go in there until we’ve fixed it.
If you have an infested bed, please contact me to discuss a plan.
Flooding with the garden hose seems like it can help so we might want to do that in the infested garden beds on the workday. But we need to coordinate because of what the exterminators are doing (and because I’d like to know where the rats run to).
If you live in either 4 or 12 west 104th street, will you please contact me? I’d like to figure out how we can coordinate better with those buildings.
At workday, we’ll update you about what steps we plan to take next.
Thank you!
Bethany
For more informational about the garden rat abatement program, Contact us at w.104.garden@gmail.com.
