[Noisebridge-discuss] The rats are getting ballsy

Rubin Abdi rubin at starset.net
Wed Feb 24 20:43:44 UTC 2010


This discussion smells a lot like say-ers and not so much like do-ers.

I'd like to restate something again, myself and a number of other people 
are completely against any efforts to do harm to the rats (i.e. poison, 
or traps intended to injure or kill them).

Additionally from past discussions, getting cats for the space is out of 
the question for two reasons:

1. There's an even larger number of us here that are allergic to cats.
2. Noisebridge as a group isn't mature enough to keep its own space (a 
mostly inanimate object) tidy and clean, there is no way in hell the 
group can keep up the maintenance associated with having a pet living in 
the space (i.e. the pet will have a horrible life and shit all over the 
place with no one cleaning up and eventually run away).

Previously when we moved in we didn't see a lot of the rats after we 
tore down all the walls and built new ones and got rid of all the trash 
piles. A big help to that was to seal up all of the holes coming into 
the space. Since then new hiding places have been created for the rats 
to take refuge from us (like all the build out materials slanted against 
the classrooms, all the junk in the elevator room, and also our beloved 
hack shelves) and they've found new ways in (like the giant hole created 
by the build out for the 2nd bathroom). A number of people have observed 
them scampering up the conduit above the incomplete bathroom into the 
hole in the ceiling.

They've most certainly been using the gap under the not-a-fire-escape 
door to get in and out, along with the stairway under the dj booth, and 
I'm sure they've started to use the main entrance too. Pretty positive 
there's a nest under the stairs leading up to the fire escape window and 
possibly some new ones in the elevator room. The new kitchen cabinets 
could also hold little places for them to live. Getting rid of these 
will help in making the space not a happy place for them to continue 
coming back to.

Again these rats are ballsy, one ran up and past me only 2 feet away 
last night and then ran over the kitchen counter. It's only going to get 
worse if we don't keep the space clean so they don't have anywhere to 
hide, and limit the number of ways they can get in or out.

-- 
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net



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