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By J. Wes Yoder
Star Staff Writer
December 11, 2002

   Evelyn Rogers hasn't seen a rat in her house in a long time. But she's smelled them after they've died in her walls.

   "I know there's some out there in that washroom because my poison's gone away," she said.

   To test her theory, she dabbed some mashed sweet potatoes on her front step. Spying through her living room window, the 62-year-old woman saw the rodents dining vigorously, although their size suggested that they were not starving.

   "You know how big a cat is?" asked Rogers' neighbor, a middle-aged woman who didn't want to see her name in the newspaper. "That's how big these rats are, gopher rats."

   This woman says the 2400 block of West 11th Street is overrun with vermin that have taken a liking to chewing through her screens and burrowing through her walls, trying to satisfy their appetite for home-cooked meals and store-bought snacks.

   "That's scary, you know," she said. "I know they will jump out at you if you corner them."

   Some of her neighbors say the same thing, and they point out their windows to what they see as the problem's root — piled tin and timber, some vacant houses, and several rusty cars. They say Don Elkins, an auto parts dealer, uses the lots of his nearby rental properties as overflow yards for broken vehicles that provide headquarters from which rats stage attacks on their pantries.

   Elkins, who owns six properties on 11th Street and neighboring Carter Street, said his properties have not attracted rats to the area. "There's nothing in there they could eat," he said.

   Public nuisance complaints have been filed about some of Elkins' properties, said David Pirritano, Calhoun County's environmental enforcement officer. But because that block of 11th Street is not in a platted neighborhood, Pirritano said, it does not fall under the authority of the county's public-nuisance ordinance. The county commission cannot require anyone there to keep a neatly trimmed, junk-free yard.

   For people who often are jarred from their sleep by the slap of a Victory rat trap, their solo battles against infestation are just another example of people's concerns getting lost in the cobwebs of the state's constitution — a century-old document that hoards power in the state capital while rendering county governments powerless to fix many minute problems.

   "Did you hear that?" exclaimed the middle-aged woman, just after a noise like a falling baseball was heard in her bathroom wall. She guessed that a rat had chewed into a wire, had been electrocuted, and had tumbled in the space between her drywall and vinyl siding — sure to cause a stink, not to mention the fire hazard.

   She pointed to holes in the trash bags that are duct-taped to the unfinished walls above her shower. Rats chewed them, she said with a shudder. "Do you want a rat to take a shower with you?

   "Lord."

   Gopher rats, Pirritano said, are a large, grayish breed that seem even larger to the startled human who encounters one, because of their long, whip-like tails. Unlike goats, they will not make a meal out of textiles, although they will chew through wood, rubber, and even thin metal if a loaf of bread awaits on the other side.

   One resident of the 11th street neighborhood said she has learned that gopher rats have an aversion to aluminum foil. She has stuffed rodent-chewed holes in her doorframe with Reynolds Wrap.

   "We kill them and kill them, but they keep coming back," she said. "I've got four grandkids, eight months to 6 years old, living here. Rats have diseases."

   Not all of the vacant property belongs to Elkins, and he said he recently spent $500 cleaning up debris. On one lot, he's got a pile of tin and dirt that he said he plans to move next week.

   Elkins says government should attack big, life-threatening problems, but should respect a man's right to do what he wants with his own land.

   "I saw on Dateline last night that a man killed a police officer," he said. "That's a lot worse than a couple of rats in an old house."

   Dan Crow says there are more than just a couple. "I fastened a cat up downstairs," Crow said. "He's killed eight or 10 since last Sunday."

   Crow agreed that gopher rats sometimes achieve the size of a small feline. But he says the rodents nonetheless are no match for a tomcat he "got from the wild."

   Regardless of the reasons for the rat infestation, Crow and others will have to fight them with new, forward-thinking tactics. The old rat stereotypes must be tossed out.

   "Would you believe it?" said one woman. "They'll eat bread, but they don't like cheese."

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