Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.
Residents of the upscale Sun City Anthem retirement community in Henderson tolerate the coyotes, jack rabbits and desert squirrels that try to hang on to what once was their habitat, but homeowners draw the line at rats.
Roof rats, non-indigenous rodents that over the last decade have haunted posh Las Vegas communities including Spanish Trail and the Scotch 80s, are trying to establish themselves in Anthem at the south end of the Las Vegas Valley, scurrying about properties and at times working their way into million-dollar homes.
Several residents of the Pulte Homes/Del Webb community of more than 5,000 residences believe its homeowners association is not taking strong enough action to control the problem that has caused some homeowners to avoid their own backyards at night.
The developer and a homeowners association member say they are taking aggressive action to control the problem, noting that not only do they have to deal with the roof rats, but also indigenous rats as well as other desert critters.
The rats are particularly a problem for residents who live on the perimeter of the neighborhood. The rodents also are prevalent on the two golf courses, where there is plenty of water and vegetation to sustain them.
Kenny Rosenberg, a retired foreign services officer whose home does not border a golf course or the desert perimeter, said in May he noticed rat droppings in his garage and a wooden venetian blind that had been chewed through.
"We had a problem -- either a rat or a ghost -- so we called an exterminator," Rosenberg said, noting that before the exterminator arrived his wife saw the rat scamper across the garage and under some items.
The animal managed to escape from the garage before the exterminator arrived.
"At the time, I thought this was an isolated incident and my responsibility alone to take care of," Rosenberg said. "But then when so many others shared their own rat stories, I realized that, while this is a regional and county problem, it is at the very least a community problem.
"There is a perception here that the community's officials are not doing enough to address the situation. What is acceptable is solving the problem and controlling these rats."
The problem came to light in the spring, when property managers put a flier on the doorknobs of residences noting that they had "received calls from residents regarding the sighting of rodents in or near residential yards."
The flier, distributed in June, said that since April the property managers had "received approximately 50 to 60 calls from residents who have encountered rodents."
But, as fall approaches, Anthem residents say the rodent problem is as bad if not worse than when the notice went out.
Barbara Dane, who has lived in her Anthem home just two months after living in Summerlin for five years, said, "I can't go out at night. I put on the flood lights, run outside to have a quick smoke and get back in my house.
"For what I am paying to live here, I want to go outside and enjoy my beautiful view of the Strip and not have to be concerned about rats."
Dane, a real estate agent, said she called Anthem management, which sent out an exterminator three weeks later. After assessing the situation it was another week before he returned to lay a trap in the desert area near her home.
"I just want to see some action," Dane said, noting that she hired another exterminator to lay traps on her property. "I don't care if they send in vultures to eat the rats. I just don't want the rats."
Allison Copening, spokeswoman for Pulte Homes/Del Webb, said the developer and the homeowners association are trying to resolve the matter.
"Rats have been a situation with us since the start of the Anthem community five or six years ago," Copening said. "We have taken a proactive stance in which residents who spot a rodent in their home or yard can call our landscape- maintenance department and we will send an exterminator to assess it."
She admits, however, that an effort to speed up the process implemented earlier this summer went wrong, resulting in the recent round of homeowner complaints.
"We tried to implement this through our customers relations office, but we found we were not getting a timely enough response," Copening said.
Calls now go directly to the landscape-maintenance department, which is to address complaints within two to three days with at least an assessment, Copening said. In the past week bait traps have been set along the desert areas and snap traps are lying in wait near the homes around the golf course, she said.
However, Copening said, the developer cannot place traps in homes or yards because they are private property.
She said homeowners can either hire the association's exterminator at a discount rate or a private exterminator to lay traps in their homes and yards.
Cliff Adele, branch manager of Phoenix Pest Control, said he devotes one day a week to setting traps for seven customers at Anthem.
"I've caught 81 rats in the last three months at Anthem," said Adele, who also has clients, including Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, in the Scotch 80s neighborhood in Las Vegas,
On the roof of one Anthem home, he says he caught 24 rats. The largest caught on another Anthem property was a 16-inch roof rat. But that's nothing compared with Scotch 80s, where he has in the last year caught 280 rats, including a 26-inch, seven-pound rodent, Adele said.
Adele said that the key to controlling rat populations is to aggressively catch and kill them before they have a chance to reproduce.
"Right now, because they have not overpopulated the area, they are healthy -- big and fat with no diseases," Adele said. "Once they overpopulate and have trouble finding food, they go into sewage areas and are susceptible to disease.
"They also tend to eat the plastic around wires and that can cause an electrical short that can result in home fires."
In recent years roof rats were brought into Southern Nevada, usually in shipments of fruit and palm trees. They were a big problem in the Spanish Trail gated community in 1998, but an aggressive program there diminished the rodents' numbers.
In recent years the rats became a big problem in the Scotch 80s and the McNeil Tract, resulting in the Clark County Health District conducting a surveillance several weeks last fall. In that operation, 119 traps were set and 43 roof rats were caught.
Health district officials called that a significant number, but not enough to indicate that the neighborhood had been overrun.
Roof rats have been a major problem for several years in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa and Glendale, Ariz. The well-established Arcadia section of central Phoenix, where citrus trees are plentiful, was overrun last year by the rodents.
If Pulte Homes/Del Webb officials are correct that indigenous rats are contributing to their problem, that is a concern to health officials because indigenous rats can be spread diseases to roof rats.
The health district says that since 1993 more than 1,100 rats of all varieties have been trapped in Clark County and tested. So far no roof rats have tested positive for the plague or hantavirus, diseases that can spread to humans, health officials said.
Some indigenous desert wood rats and white-throated wood rats, however, have tested positive for the plague, health officials say.
Health district spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said there has been no major local roof rat studies since last year's Urban Rodent Surveillance Project. She said periodic testing of rats will continue.
Meanwhile, at Anthem's sprawling recreation center, talk around the mah-jongg and card tables inevitably turns to rats and what can be done to control them.
"The rats seem to be a neglected problem," said Marti Waters, an Anthem resident since November.
"There seems to be a lot of apathy -- residents who say they haven't seen any rats so they say there is no problem. That is, until they actually see one on their property."
Waters said her property has been rat free thanks to the alertness Mia, her Lhasa Apso. But her neighbors have reported finding dead ones floating in their pools and fountains. Another neighbor found a rat nesting in a stone outdoor barbecue, she said.
Anthem Homeowners Association board member Dick Sovde, whose home is on one of the golf courses and abuts a desert area, said people have to make adjustments when they in an area carved out of the desert wilderness.
"You live in the desert, you have to accept that there are snakes and coyotes, bees and even rats," he said.
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