Rats pestering east Petaluma gardeners

Emboldened rodents have been swiping veggies from local green thumbs.|

Pat Faverio pours her heart and soul into her garden.

The most eye-catching piece of produce is her heirloom tomatoes. For months she tends to them daily, anxiously waiting the moment she can pick them from the ground and christen a memorable meal with her colorful, pumpkin-shaped tomatoes.

But one day that excitement evaporated in a single moment. The night before she was ready to harvest them, something had eaten almost all of the tomatoes, leaving only small remnants as if it was taunting her with evidence at a crime scene.

The culprit? Rats.

“It’s disheartening. It hurts,” Faverio said. “You’ve spent months raising this little stupid tomato plant and it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You can’t wait. Then the jerks go and rip it right out of you. It’s maddening.”

A small group of elderly women in the neighborhoods of East Petaluma have banded together through their shared struggles dealing with rats in their homes, frustrated that the number of encounters is increasing. Since their individual efforts are falling short, they’re imploring city officials to step in and help combat the growing population of vermin – far from the ongoing cleanup efforts downtown along the river.

All of the women are widows, too, left to fend off the rodents almost entirely on their own, which has been challenging both personally and financially. Most pest control companies offer free estimates, but services can cost anywhere from hundreds of dollars to thousands for large-scale eradication.

Loretta Esquibel, for example, said she recently spent $5,000 to get them out of her attic.

The women estimated each of them have killed “dozens, easily.” They believe their proximity to the creek that connects Ely Boulevard South and East Washington Street has a lot to do with the infestation affecting all of their homes.

“I’ve had to learn to put on my big girl panties, get my rubber gloves, my plastic bag … grab the tail, try not to look, pretending you didn’t see anything, and get it out in the garbage,” Faverio said.

They said some neighbors have become so discouraged by the loss of flowers and produce that they’ve given up on home gardening altogether.

However, Nina Keck isn’t waving the white flag just yet.

At first glance, her backyard seems like an inviting space. There’s trees providing shade, a pool surrounded by artificial grass and a sheltered table area. On the side of her house is a large garden area where she grows flowers and different vegetables.

Look closer, and the rat presence becomes clearer. Many of the trees have large traps at the intersections where the branches meet the trunk. In-between her four garden beds are additional traps, although they’re less effective since the rats have learned to avoid them, she said. Keck has even gone so far as to shield her most precious flowers and produce with mason jars.

“They’re multiplying more and more,” she said. “Every year it’s getting worse.”

Before her husband died, Florita Escalante said they once killed 10 rats in a single month. Now that she’s on her own, her son, who lives in Santa Rosa and works in Petaluma, stops by daily in case there’s dead vermin she needs help throwing out.

“Every day after work he comes and checks,” Escalante said.

After Boulevard Cinemas was shut down for a day in January because a potential rat sighting, city officials sprang into action to clean up the downtown riverfront by enforcing trash code violations and splitting the cost of a $12,000 contract for an exterminator with SMART. The transit company owns a nearby train trestle, which has become a breeding ground for rodents.

Public Works and Utilities director Dan St. John said the exterminator has reported “a drop-off” in rats since they began servicing the area in the winter.

There was an uptick when the city began paving the cobblestones on the promenade and rat habitats by Water Street were subsequently disrupted. Many took advantage of the dumpster bins that were suddenly exposed because of the construction.

St. John also pointed out increased efforts by some businesses, including the Great Mill, to hire their own pest services and clean their dumpster enclosures more often.

“We’ll be keeping a close eye on it as the Water (Street) project gets completed and the bins and totes are put back into the enclosures,” he said.

But the city doesn’t have any jurisdiction when it comes to combating residential pests. St. John said they do rat abatement for city-owned properties when it needs to be done, “but does not offer control practices on private properties.”

Translation: the four women in East Petaluma are on their own, forced to battle the rats however they can as long as they want to keep gardening.

Faverio doesn’t plan on relenting any time soon, though, and will continue to plead her case to city officials.

“For each neighbor to do one little thing (on their own) is not enough,” she said. “Something must be done by the city because fighting on such a small scale isn’t doing anything. It’s up to the city to face up to this problem for the safety of your citizens because it is a safety factor, I think.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)

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