Free Republic

Rats prefer the neighborhoods of Harlem, the Upper West Side, and Bedford-Stuyvesant — and they really like to party in the summer, a new study shows. Citywide, the rat population grew about 10 percent from 2016 to 2017 based on complaints filed to 311, the RentHop study released on Tuesday shows.

Trouble is, so do the rats in her neighborhood. They’re chewing through wires in her engine compartment, causing hundreds of dollars in damages. JoAnn and her husband Tracy live in Santee, Calif., just east of San Diego. Recently retired, they enjoy the open Every night, Joann's pours a little coyote piss around her tires. "I dot my driveway with some too," she says. She also places a Coyote urine-soaked sponge inside a tin pan near the car. She's not sure it's working yet and does not want to take her car in for any more repairs until she's rid of...

A giant 20-pound rodent with the ability to destroy roads, levees and wetlands has been discovered in Stanislaus County. A giant invasive rodent with the ability to destroy roads, levees and wetlands has been discovered in Stanislaus County.

It's already being tested on the International Space Station with mice. Forty rodents, each equipped with a special skin implant that automatically delivers medication, flew to the orbiting complex aboard a Dragon spacecraft in December. Half the mice came home in January, and the other half will return home this month. Testing is in progress on the experiment to see how well the mice reacted to the drug. The device would work for people with wasting muscle diseases, perhaps for patients forced to rest in bed for months after a surgery. It also is being approved right now to administer...

As a Clovis police officer, John McGrory is ready to take down a bad guy at a moment’s notice. But even a no-nonsense cop like McGrory can’t pass up a moment of cuteness. That’s what happened in a video posted by the Clovis Police Department on Sunday, which was national Squirrel Appreciation Day (yes, that’s really a thing). The video shows McGrory standing next to a tree when a squirrel scampers over to him and gently takes a nut from his hand. McGrory smiles and laughs as the furry rodent scoots back to the tree. The video has 17,000 views...

According to Dr. John-Olov Jansson, a professor at Sahlgrenska Academy who participated in the research, said his team discovered a completely new system that regulates fat mass. "Quite simply, we have found support for the existence of internal bathroom scales," Jansson said in a statement. "The weight of the body is registered in the lower extremities. If the body weight tends to increase, a signal is sent to the brain to decrease food intake and keep the body weight constant." The research was conducted on already-obese rodents that were then loaded with extra weights, which caused their body fat to...

f you're scared of rats, you may want to look away now. For scientists have identified one of the largest species in the world – and it can crack open coconuts with its bare teeth. The giant rat – named Uromys vika – is a foot-and-a-half long and weighs up to two pounds. It nests up to 30ft high in trees in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. However only one has been found, and it died shortly after capture. The animal is more than four times the size of British black rats, which grow no more than ten...

The price of Rat meat goes up in Thailand I rarely copy a news story but a story about eating rats I can't pass up. This story from PDN about the price of rat meat in Phitsanulok. Before you think that's it's only poor farmers eating rats, the cost of rat meat is double that of chicken and pork. This lady says it costs 250 baht a kilogram for a big rodent, not that i'm noting to buy a whole kilo of it! Still I've eaten rat meat and although I prefer fried frog, fried rat isn't too bad...

TAYLOR, Ariz. (3TV/CBS5) — Health officials are urging people to take precautions after a second Arizona county in two weeks confirmed that fleas in the area have tested positive for plague. The announcement by Navajo County Public Health officials on Friday comes one week after Coconino County officials found prairie dogs in the area to be carrying fleas with the plague -- the infectious disease infamous for killing millions of Europeans in the Middle Ages. The fleas in Navajo County were found near the town of Taylor. Health officials have notified the residents whose property will be treated. The area...

Hungry rodents are apparently menacing parents, nannies and babies on the Upper West Side. There are about 2 million rats in New York City, and some have settled in Central Park and Riverside Park.

I never dreamed slowly cruising through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Studies have shown that motorcycling requires more decisions per second, and more sheer data processing than nearly any other common activity or sport. The reactions and accurate decision making abilities needed have been likened to the reactions of fighter pilots! The consequences of bad decisions or poor situational awareness are pretty much the same for both groups too. Occasionally, as a rider I have caught myself starting to make bad or late decisions while riding. In flight training, my instructors called this being "behind the power...

Photo by Pat Pat sends us a shot of this monster Friday night: “Check this bad boy out. Found on U Street today.” Ed. Note: I will never ever ever complain about wild bunny rabbits again.

State public health veterinarian Paul Ettestad said plague can be present in fleas that infest wild rodents in Santa Fe County, including within the city limits of Santa Fe and in other locations around New Mexico. "Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting you and your children at risk," he said. Health workers are conducted environmental investigations around the homes of the three patients to look for ongoing risk and to ensure the safety of the immediate family members and neighbors."

For four years, photographer Louis-Marie Preau would lie motionless underwater for hours at a time to get this perfect shot of a Eurasian beaver carrying a branch back to its lodge. Equally as impressive as Preau's efforts were the efforts to pull these delightful creatures back from near extinction. Via bioGraphic: Prized for both their fur and their castoreum—a scent-gland secretion once believed to cure everything from headaches to hysteria, Eurasian beavers were nearly hunted to extinction by the middle of the 19th century. In France, the species (Castor fiber) was nearly wiped out entirely, with the exception of a...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Health officials are investigating how a rare rat virus called the Seoul virus infected eight people in Wisconsin and Illinois. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services says all eight people had direct contact with rats at Illinois and Wisconsin ratteries, which are rat-breeding facilities.

DELTONA, FL (WKMG/CNN) - A squirrel got into a retirement home, injuring at least three people and prompting a call to 911 on Thursday. "It's jumping on people and biting them and scratching them," the 911 caller said. "It's still in there, and people are bleeding." People can be heard in the background asking each other if they are all right. The attack happened around 2 p.m., the woman telling dispatch people are bleeding and need help. "I don' t know if we need an ambulance, but we need some care for people here," the 911 caller said. "The people...

Capybara are real damn cute. Look at this bugger. In fact, capybara are so endearing, that some people may have been importing them to own as pets. This might explain why the 100-pound rodents, which are native to South America’s marshlands, have been showing up in places where they don’t belong. According to biologist Elizabeth Congdon, an assistant professor at Bethune-Cookman University, the state of Florida could have a serious capybara problem—and it might be the fault of exotic pet owners.

US Fish and Wildlife Service to target diseased prairie dogs, food for the ferrets, via specially designed drones that shoot the candies in three directions at once The US government is set to unleash drones that fire vaccine-covered M&Ms in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret, a species that is facing a plague epidemic across America’s great plains. The US Fish and Wildlife (FWS) has developed a plan to bombard ferret habitat in Montana with the vaccine, which will be administered via specially designed drones that will be able to shoot M&Ms in three directions simultaneously. The vaccines...

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change—in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island—wiped it off the planet. But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who...

The Council Against Inhumanity to Rodents (CAIR) today announced that even though not all of the millions of Rodents on Earth are Rats, and even though not all Rats are rabid, all rats are being mercilessly disparaged due to the un-Rat actions of a few. Ratophobia must cease!(Please see also, USA Today: U.S. cities face anti-Muslim backlash and Obama Praises “Enormous” Muslim Contributions to Our Country.) Sadly, there was recently a deplorable incident in which a poor, disenfranchised Muslim woman was bitten by a rat. While hard at work in the kitchen preparing the evening meal for her beloved husband, an Islamophobic Rat...