Hopefully, out there the rat will be quickly eaten by a hawk. But we have had calls from people who trap the rats and then call and say, "I took him out to the desert and set him free!" Which is ridiculous, because it's just transferring the problem to the desert.
Paceley: Well, we don't have a rat advocate, if that's what you mean.
NT: Is everyone in the neighborhood cooperating, or is there one guy who's actually helping the rats, like that weird guy in the movie Willard? My wife takes all the rat calls, and I take all the citrus calls. It also promotes the Arcadia Citrus Program, which sends the excess citrus from our neighborhood to hungry families. We're getting up to 30 calls per day on the rat hot line.
What we've done is send out information about how to seal up your home and clean up your landscape. Paceley: We'll never get them all the way out of the neighborhood, because you've always got new people and a lot of elderly women who aren't up at night and who aren't vigilant about getting rats off their property.
NT: What are you doing to get the rats out of your 'hood? That's what we use to draw them to our traps. They prefer to eat apples and pomegranates, and their favorite food is cat food, when they can find it. Paceley: Citrus is their primary source of water. NT: And they apparently prefer the fruit off citrus trees, which Arcadia is lousy with. They're indigenous to the coast, and they're usually in Southeast Asia.
New Times: Why are they called roof rats?īarry Paceley: They live most of their lives about four feet above the ground, traveling by trees and telephone wires and sometimes from roof to roof. On the eve of his one-year anniversary as Roof Rat Man, Paceley and I sit in the Ritz-Carlton's Bistro 24, where, much to the horror of the wait staff, Paceley, in a booming voice, discusses rat poison, bubonic plague and the distinguishing characteristics of a healthy rat turd. It's been a year since Paceley and his fellow Arcadians went public about their ongoing battle with roof rats, the pesky, plague-carrying vermin who are deviling this once-stylish part of town. It does not store any personal data.Rats! Barry Paceley's got them, but like the guy with the proverbial pile of lemons, Paceley has made lemonade - which, as residents of the tony Arcadia neighborhood know, is a roof rat's favorite beverage. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
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