Rats not a health threat

Monday, Sept. 25, 2000 | 11:46 a.m.

While rats in the Spanish Trail community of southwest Las Vegas are a nuisance, Nevada and Clark County officials said today there is no evidence that the rodents pose a public health threat.

One dead roof rat, which can climb up trees and into homes, was turned into the Nevada Division of Agriculture last week, said Tom Smigel of the division. It was so badly decomposed, no blood test could be completed for plague or other diseases, he said.

Pest control company representatives and officials have discovered the rats only in Spanish Trail, an upscale development of custom homes southwest of Rainbow Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. Officials suspect the rodents came in shipments of trees and other cargo.

"They're just a nuisance," Smigel said. While the state has never seen any type of rat other than roof rats, that doesn't mean burrowing species aren't in the Las Vegas Valley, he said. The desert, a normally inhospitable environment for the vermin, is becoming more attractive to them as water and food become available along with the growing urban population, he said.

American Pest Control owner George Botta said he has trapped about 24 rats in the past month. Botta sets the bait in an enclosed box. The rat has to run a maze to eat the bait and children and pets can't get to it, he said. After eating the poison, most rats go off to die in two or three days, so he has no idea how many other rodents have been killed.

The threat of disease that comes with rats concerns state and county officials, but it is a threat that has not yet materialized.

"Unless any rat turns up with the plague, I don't think it is warranted to panic at this time," Clark County Health District epidemeologist Dr. Rose Bell said.

In the past two years, the closest reported case of plague has been one case in a Southern Utah man.

There has been no case of plague in a human being or pets in Nevada, said Clare Schmutz, director of the health district's Environmental Health Division. The health district periodically surveys local veterinarians and local animals hospitals.

"When you say plague, it sounds like the old days, scary," Botta said.

To get rid of rats, residents need to remove their food and water sources, he said. In addition to pet food in dishes placed in yards, remove bird feeders and any fruit and nut sources from backyard gardens until the rats go away, he said.