‘I’m getting tired’: Kamloops woman losing sleep in battle against rats

Kamloops resident Lynn Jones has gone for more than a week without uninterrupted sleep due to noisy rat activity under and inside of her mobile home.

At roughly 3 a.m. the activity starts and continues for hours. Jones is in her 60s and works a busy schedule as a housekeeper.

“They’re in the walls and vents, I hear them skittering around, and the dog goes nuts,” she said. “Of course, I’m stressed about it so I can’t go to sleep right away, then I’m back awake at three and then off to work. I’m getting tired.”

The two species of rats causing problems across the province are the Norway rat and roof rat and it isn’t news their populations have been increasing over the years.

It is the first time in her four years of living in the small mobile home that Jones has rats. Her home is clean and uncluttered. There was a dead rat in a trap in the hallway when iNFOnews.ca stopped by on Nov. 26.

“It started under the house but then I was cleaning a cubby and thought I saw something in the corner of my eye running past,” Jones said. “I thought I was being paranoid, but brought in an electric trap and the next morning there was a rat in it.”

In the wee hours the following morning, Jones’ dog dove off the bed and ran in all directions before staring under the bed.

“I opened the bedroom door, got back in bed and waited,” Jones said. “The rat made a run out the bedroom and my dog chased it down the hall. My dog came back and I closed the door. The next morning the rat was in the trap.”

Jones doesn’t know how the rats are getting from under the house to the inside. She can’t find any holes in her walls aside from an A/C unit that is soon coming out. She hasn’t found rat feces inside yet.

There’s a hole in the skirting around her home that needs to be boarded up.

“When they’re under the house they can chew wires and water lines and wreak all sorts of havoc,” she said.

Rats can not only damage buildings, they carry and spread a variety of diseases. A breeding pair of them can produce more than 900 offspring per year.

To prevent rodents, it is recommended residents cut back shrubbery one metre from exterior walls to eliminate hiding spots, eliminate moisture sources like clogged gutters, seal up cracks and possible entry points to homes and keep properties clean of food.

The province of Alberta has a rat free policy where if a rat sighting is reported, a control staff member will remove it, but that policy doesn’t exist in BC.

Matthew Wright with Orkin Canada in Kelowna deals with rat populations every year and confirmed populations are still out of control in the BC Interior and it is likely too late for a policy to be effective.

“I wish I could say things have improved but I can’t,” he said in a previous interview with iNFOnews.ca. “The province isn’t making a plan and I can’t see them doing it now just because of the cost it would involve,” he said. “There is always hope but I think that time has come and gone, it’d be pretty pricey.”

A professional from Bugs Gone is coming this week to deal with Jones’ rat problem, which will cost her upwards of $400.

“You want to hear something funny?” Jones said. “The rats stole all my candy. Yep, all my Werther’s.”