Tinan, I would say your definition of "harm" and mine are different. Having all the insulation eaten off your car's engine wires, sitting outside in your driveway, causing a $1,200 repair bill not *relatively* harmless. I respectfully disagree with your observation. My neighbor and his brand new Jag were not happy, nor did they consider the roof rats responsible for that damage *relatively* harmless. Roof rats have also destroyed several of my fruit trees by girdling them (now have chicken wire around trunks), as well as eaten large amounts of my citrus at my expense. Of course risk of disease will be higher if rats invade your home, garage or storage sheds, but they are still not *relatively* harmless even outside. As Renee has provided for us, careful trapping can keep the population down, and reduce damage and harm to both yourself and your property. I have successfully trapped and poisoned the rats to the point of keeping the damage down to reasonable levels, but I will always battle them out here where I live, due to ideal living conditions for roof rats. Even with all the predators I have in my area, Barn owls, Great Horned owls, Red Tailed hawks, Red Shoulder hawks, White Tailed kites, Peregrine Falcons, American Kestrels, Sharp Shinned hawks, coyotes, bobcats, roadrunners and weasels. All these predators I see on a daily basis still cannot keep our rodent population down, so I assist to keep my property from harm. Patty S.

WOW that's serious. I can smell the rat nests from *here*, pesky. ugh ugh ugh...how the city refuses to do anything about that public hazard is beyond me. Maybe they're waiting for a pet to get bitten by rabid vermin?? (sarcasm). How can they ignore anything that looks like those photos? I just don't get it. I wish you fast and effective luck in your pursuing it through the channels you know of. And sable, glad to spread the word of "Rascal" -- he also wrote a book called "Raccoons are the Brightest People" which was in heavy rotation on my nightstand with the first-mentioned book. http://www.amazon.com/Raccoons-Brightest-People-Sterling-North/dp/052518788X REALLY worth reading along with "Rascal"; like the nonfiction version of it. And re starlings: we have had an ongoing battle with them as they nest *right above* our front door every year, leaving poop-trails down our walk and driveway, across the court to one particular tree they always fly to...just constantly embarrassing, as no matter how often we cleaned the walk and the door, they'd mess it up again as soon as we were done. We tried putting metal mesh to block the entrance they'd been using--they pecked right through it, even though our contractor said it had always stopped starlings before. I hated starlings until I found a book called "Arnie the Darling Starling" at Goodwill. I do agree with the criticisms of the author's care for the bird, but I will never look down my nose at starlings again (although of course I'll keep my mouth closed when I'm looking up at them : )). (actually, I'm happy that that one negative [and correct, IMO] reviewer mentioned Linda Johns, because I now search or her books every time I go to GW. ONE of these days, one of these days...) Here is a link that might be useful: O.K., they're cute too : )

"We passed on an otherwise perfect house because it abutted a highly used nature trail. Sure, 99.9% of the people going by are fine, but what about the .01%?" That is why I mentioned checking the predator list. We looked at a nice house on 5 acres that was in a great area. The elderly resident was moving into a nursing home. While we were walking the property, we happened to run into the neighbor next door and had a chat with him. He seemed very nice. When I got home I did an offender search for that vicinity and was startled to learn that this 'nice' neighbors son was on the list for child offenses, domestic battery and burglary! He had lived elsewhere for awhile but was back living with his parents. It made me wonder if the children of the elderly woman had moved 'mom' out because of this. Needless to say we passed on the house. A little later I was curious to see who bought the house and learned that a couple with 2 young children had moved in. I didn't want to take the chance that they didn't know about the guy who lived next door, so I sent them an anonymous note with a print out of the offender and the stats (address). I didn't want to scare them but I would have felt terrible if I had neglected to share what I knew. It takes a village to keep kids safe in this day and age. I'm very happy to do my part to help any/every child enjoy a safe, happy childhood.

Update on my own roof rat control efforts. I have successfully used snap traps tied to branches in my fig tree, using the plan outlined on this U. of Florida extension website: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/uw120. A key idea is to activate the traps at dusk and disable them at dawn in order to avoid by-catch of other animals and birds (it also helps here that the traps are in a tree with nothing in it that would attract other animals, like possums). In two nights I have caught 3 rats (including a humungous, mature male and two young females). My neighbors (the new, responsible ones replacing the hoarders who had exacerbated the rat situation), seeing my success, have also started trapping. This is clearly a good time to do so: the rats are apparently desperate right now, with no fruit currently readily available and so desperate that they had, earlier this week, actually begun to eat the bark on my fig tree, girdling one branch completely, having already eaten all the terminal buds and baby figs on the tree. With luck, we can knock these populations back down and have some peace again on this front. Unlike the scare statistics put forth by professional exterminators, roof rat populations are not infinite -- they just seem to be -- and can be controlled (Norway rats, now, are another thing entirely...).