A rat in the toilet? Time to call the county's "sewer baiter"
The two are standing by a manhole cover Reed has just opened in the middle of the street on the 3600 block of Southwest 107th Street.
The older man, who goes by the name "J.R.," has a home across from the manhole, which goes down some 18 feet into a sewer.
On three different occasions, J.R. heard splashing in his toilet and found rats that had come from the sewer and crawled through the pipe to his house.
"I knew it could happen. I know it wasn't one of those urban legends," he says. "I beat them to death with a toilet plunger."
When the third rat was splashing around last month, J.R. decided it was time to call Public Health — Seattle and King County.
That's how Reed, 29, whose official title is "health and environmental inspector," ended up in South Seattle.
Around the health agency, his job is better known as "sewer baiter," the only such position in the county. Every weekday, he drives all over Seattle — to rich and poor neighborhoods — opens manholes and lowers little wax blocks of rat-poison bait down the openings.
For reasons health officials can't quite explain, the third quarter of the year gets 30 percent to nearly 70 percent more rat complaints than other times of the year. Last year, the department received 925 rat complaints.
Other cities also bait sewers but don't have someone doing it full time. Everett's usual dozen annual complaints are assigned to the utility crew, and the same is done with Bellevue's six to a dozen annual rat-in-a-sewer complaints. A phone operator for the city of Bellevue joked, "We don't allow rats here."
As for the increase in Seattle complaints during July through September, it could happen because of nice weather. People are out in their yards more and have a chance to see scurrying rats.
Maybe it's because the fruit on those trees makes for tasty rat treats. As do barbecue leftovers that have dropped to the ground.
Then there are the bird feeders and all the feed that ends up on the ground.
And yes, rats do come up toilets.
On this day, Reed also finds himself opening up manhole covers near Southwest Trenton Street and 11th Avenue Southwest. A woman called Public Health after seeing a rat swimming in her toilet. She tried to flush the rat back down, but rats are excellent swimmers and this one wouldn't cooperate.
For many people, that's a true Stephen King moment: the rat that wouldn't go away.
"We told her to squirt dishwasher soap into the toilet. It breaks the buoyancy in the water, and the rat sinks," Reed says.
Baiting the sewers
What Reed can do is keep baiting the sewer near the woman's home.
He lowers the wax blocks so they dangle just above the bottom of the sewer. The poison is an anticoagulant, causing the rats to bleed to death internally. The sewer eventually floats the bodies to a treatment plant.
Sometimes, Reed finds that the rats have chewed through the string and the wire holding the bait. Rats gnaw throughout their lives because their incisor teeth grow at the rate of 4 to 5 inches a year and they need to keep their teeth short.
Recently, he made a visit to Magnolia, to a stretch on West Blaine Street where the homes are pricey and the lawns manicured.
Another rat in the toilet.
Bill Heaton, the Public Health supervisor whose duties include rat problems, said it's usually Norway rats, which nest in basements and burrow in soil, that are found in toilets.
That expensive garbage disposal in the kitchen? It makes great milkshakes for Norway rats that crawl up the pipe looking for where that food came from. That's how they end up in a toilet, squeezing through the toilet's narrow curvature. A rat weighing close to a pound can compress its body enough to squeeze through a half-inch opening, Heaton said.
The other common rat is the roof rat, which often nests in upper portions of buildings.
This might be high season for rat reports, but it's a year-round battle for Reed, who always has plenty of work to do.
On a typical day, he can work on 50 to 70 manholes, some as part of regular maintenance, some the result of rat reports. For one area where rats were reported in January, Reed has made 16 visits this year. And at best, the bait manages to keep the rat population at a tolerable level.
Reed says he likes his job, which he has had for three years.
"My wife's a lawyer. The difference between our jobs is when she comes home, she's a little frustrated at times," Reed says. "When I get home, I'm at peace."
Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com
