Dave Oliver has so many rats on his Old Town property that he sees some basking in the sunlight in his yard. Those he shoots with his pellet gun from the bathroom.
But that’s just one measure Oliver has taken to fight an explosion of rats on his Veazie Street property this spring. After noticing a few rats here and there since 2019, Oliver has found about 60 of the creatures this year, and he’s determined to exterminate them.
“They’re not paying the mortgage,” he said. “I’m going to win, and it’s going to cost me a mountain of money. If I had kids and pets, I don’t know if I would be able to afford this.”
While Oliver has taken on the task of remediating the house where he’s lived for the past 40 years, he’s growing frustrated with the lack of help from his local government.
Oliver has written to the city of Old Town multiple times now, asking for it to do something, anything, because he knows solving a rat problem isn’t the responsibility of one property owner.
“It’s not a property-specific problem,” he said. “I’m not asking them to eat the cost of this. But we’ve given them several options of what other communities do, like a birth control program.”
Rat populations have been on the rise in Maine in recent years, as they can keep reproducing during increasingly mild winters. Just across the river from Oliver’s house, portions of Milford last year dealt with some of the worst rat numbers seen in years.
On Oliver’s property, the rats have run through his gardens, made homes underneath his shed and garage, and have even found their way into his basement. There, the rats have burrowed holes as they’ve tried to go up to the main living level.
From outreach he’s done in the community, Oliver has found he’s far from alone.
Just across the street, his neighbors had to leave their house for more than a week while specialists removed rats that were throughout the house, Oliver said.
His neighbor, Matt Willette, said his rat problem was so bad that at one point a rat was running around the main floor of his house. He chased it into the bathroom, tackled it, then killed it himself.
“I cornered one in my bathroom and I had gloves on and I was able to grab it,” he said. “It tried to bite my hand. I ended up taking it outside and hucking it against the garage and it died.”
The problem at Oliver’s house is continuing to grow, even though he’s poured hundreds of dollars into preventive measures and extermination services, he said. He’s also looking at getting his bulkhead replaced, which will cost around $16,000, Oliver said.
Oliver has an organic garden from which he harvests more than a hundred pounds of fresh produce each year. But because of the rats, he’s gone from picking a fresh vegetable or fruit and snacking on it while he works in his yard to going through gallons of vinegar a week to wash his produce to ensure it’s safe, he said.
Old Town City Manager Bill Mayo said the city occasionally receives complaints about rats. When one comes in, he said, Code Enforcement Officer David Russell checks the area for food sources, such as chickens in non-agricultural zones, bird feeders and compost piles.
“If Dave Russell finds those things he will ask folks to remove them or limit the number because food sources are why they show up,” Mayo said.
But that’s not satisfactory for Oliver.
“We need the community to help,” he said. “It doesn’t sound unreasonable to ask community officials to put something in place.”
Meanwhile, Oliver is forced to continue waging his war on the rats trying to take over his home, he said.
“There is no way away from it,” he said. “There is no peace.”
