"Hello." "Good morning." "It's a warm and a sunny one today." "75 degrees." "It's a great day to head to the beach." "Area residents have been concerned about rat infestation in the area -- the roof rat, the Norway rat, the most common living amongst us." "They're worried about the health implications and the impact on children." "Scientists are beginning to learn about the wild urban it's very clear how similar their behavior is to humans." "As the population increases, so do the rats feeding off the garbage." "Rats up 140%." "The city's failing to control its vermin." "The world health organization is on high alert after an outbreak of the plague hit the city." "The plague killed an estimated 200 million people in the middle ages." "The health department has stepped up its spending at $2.9 million..." "In some parts of the country, rats are becoming resistant to the poisons we use to kill them." "Rats are showing these poison-resistant mutations all over the globe." "There's no end in sight as the rat population increases rapidly." "44" "my name is Ed Sheehan." "I am an exterminator." "I spent 48 years in the pest-control industry." "Started Saturday after labor day 1967." "Nobody wants to do it." "I'll do it." "I made a lot of money doing this stuff." "Rats are very intelligent, more intelligent than I think we give them credit for." "However you kill them, you kill them, but for every action on our part, there's a reaction on their part." "They're observant." "They know the area." "They're always alert about what's going on." "Listen, they're scary." "But I've got to respect them." "You know, after almost 50 years..." "They jump out I'm jumping back." "Good morning, everybody." "Welcome to the rat academy." "Without any further ado, I would like to turn the floor over to Dr. Robert Carrigan." "Thanks, Rick." "Good morning, everybody." "Good morning." "Okay." "So even though a lot of people think," ""well, it's just a dirty rat"..." "These are very sophisticated, diabolically clever animals." "For those of you here with the department of health in particular, new exterminators, new inspectors, in this academy, our job is to train you to see what others overlook when you walk around a city." "Check this out." "This is lower east side, New York City." "There's a restaurant over here." "Come down the sidewalk, and boom, let's move in." "Most people would walk right by that." "They would never think of rats being able to use that hole." "This rodent has marked up the corners." "They'll use pheromones within their feces their and urine to communicate." "Rat urine is this blob with a trail." "Blob, trail, blob, trail." "Look at this one." "Gorgeous rat pee right there." "Whoop." "I don't want to eat there." "You'll see rat pee all over this city." "People say, "well, can we get rid of the rats?"" "I'm like, "that's a big, tall order."" "The rats have been in Manhattan for 250 years." "Rats originated in Mongolia area, as far as we know, hid in the ships and fed on whatever the sailors were eating, came across the ocean over to the new world, and so they spread in the way people spread." "The greatest danger rats pose to us is disease." "Of course, everyone knows about bubonic plague." "Rats and their fleas wiped out 200 million people." "But there are other diseases." "There are cases of E. Coli..." "Bartonella, salmonella, rickettsia." "The fact that they inhabit sewers, rats can carry 5 million viruses on one foot." "And this is an animal that, if it has an opportunity, will attack." "And if you're standing -- a human being 5'7 ", 5'8"..." "They jump right onto the chest, crawl across our bodies, bite someone in the face, literally kill us." "We are hardwired to avoid wanting to think about these animals." "We are hardwired to be repulsed, probably for our survival." "Good morning, everybody." "It's the end of winter." "What is that?" "It's rat season, okay." "It's rat reproduction season, so this is -- my name is Rick Simeone." "I'm the director of pest-control services for the department of health and mental hygiene." "We want to talk a little bit today about Catten Plaza." "How many Burrows did we see there yesterday, does anybody remember?" "10 Burrows in that little area, so it was pretty bad." "Listen, this is a 200-year-old problem in New York City." "It's a challenge everywhere." "Look over here." "Softball-sized Burrows back here." "That's a rat." "Great day for baiting." "Yeah, wow." "Look at this." "Huge kickback." "So we'll start off baiting this one." "As the spring and the warmer weather comes, rats reproduce as many as 8 to 12 in a litter, five to six litters a year." "They're prolific in their ability to reproduce." "On to the next one." "10 years ago, our exterminators were not trained at this level." "This one is not as deep." "You need to know dosage rates, types of baits to use, baiting techniques, the biology of the animal, new advances in the field." "That looks like a burrow right there." "The goal is that you go into one of these areas." "Rats are reduced, so we provide a much healthier environment for people in New York City." "There we go." "All right." "Awesome." "If you think you can solve" ""we're baiting, we'll be back in a month,"" "it ain't happening." "Our elected officials do things half-assed." "A lot of garbage here." "You are supplying their needs." "We put our garbage out at night, doesn't get picked up till the morning." "So the rats are on the clock." "10 to 15 minutes after that garbage goes out..." "It's like..." "Every night at 6:00 somebody came and gave you food..." "Why would you leave?" "Why would you leave?" "We're going to be looking at where rats can hide." "So I'm going to be stopping and almost reading the city with you guys." "So we good?" "Yep." "So let's go." "I call New York City rat-tropolis." "I do so because in many ways, it's also trash-opolis." "Those things go together." "New York being one of the most densely populated cities in the world." "The rats are going to take advantage." "From a distance, from a distance," "I want to point out -- see one right there?" "Right?" "So they're coming out of the catch basin right into those bags." "The rats live in the sewer system that runs this particular street, so when we get over there, we're going to kind of stand on the edge here." "You don't need to look far for food and places to hide." "Where those two things coincide, you can find the rats." "Those bags are full of all the food from that particular restaurant -- pizza, spaghetti." "Those bags are loaded with food." "See one right now." "See one right there?" "Can you see that?" "Oh, look at that." "They're coming out of the catch basin." "Right in that bag right there." "He's way down in the bottom." "He's just hunkering down." "Oh, there he goes." "Right out of the sewer into the food bank, back down to the bed, and no exposure that they have to worry about." "There are several rats right now in these bags waiting probably for this threat, which is us, to disappear." "And we're going to disappear." "I want to show you guys something over here." "We're going to walk right along here." "When we do things like put out our trash and let it sit, rats are giving us standing ovations." "Our behavior is a big reward for these rats." "Look." "Here's a sirloin burger." "Rice." "These baskets are just buffets." "So much food." "So the rats are just ripping into it to try to get to them." "They'll drag a piece of food out of the litter basket." "Here's a rat runway right along the wall." "Right next to the trash can." "And they'll work their way into a jungle and a canopy and eat in peace." "Across the street." "Rats coming out of this catch basin." "Oh, look at that." "Very, very heavily used." "If a rat finds a food source and they discover one of the pathways among, say, three is in fact the shortest, safest way to that food, that way becomes the main way." "Right in front of us." "Right in front of us." "So we're very similar in our behaviors in that regard." "Okay." "We're going to head over here." "It's called the wedding garden." "The city of New York extensively baited this park." "Burrowing into the soil." "Look at this hole." "Certainly, that's one of their favorites." "There's a nice burrow right here." "Whenever you spot one, you begin to look within a six-foot radius for the others." "So mounded up right here." "A typical rat burrow -- they will hollow out a chamber, put a bed in there, styrofoam, plastic, because it's soft and cushy." "All right, I'm caving in right now." "This is sinking several inches, right on top of the -- rat, rat, Bobby." "Oh, yeah." "Big, old -- they're cunning in that they build two escape routes." "It's kind of like the back doors to our own homes." "Oh!" "There he is." "They will cover up and disguise them." "They'll fill them in with leaves." "Hear that?" "They seem to pop out of the ground." "There he goes." "There's a good, fresh burrow." "Right under the tree." "Gorgeous." "Really prominent, well-used." "Gorgeous burrow." "Let's give it a shot." "Jump." "Keep working it." "Rat, rat, rat!" "Beautiful." "Wow." "Yeah, he just dropped down." "Oh, my God." "Holy moly." "All right." "We're going to cross over right at the edge here." "As you walk about, you can often see whether or not something's being used." "See one right there?" "Unbelievable." "They drop down here." "In cities, they live wherever they can find an opportunity to move into without being discovered." "Streets begin to get undermined." "The sidewalk begins to break up." "Right here, you can see right below our feet, you have a major crevice there." "As the rats dig it out, notice the stress cracks." "There's a large group of rats." "Right here, I'm looking at lots of rodent hair." "And that's one of the telltale signs the rats are coming and going." "Check this out." "We're going to see what we get." "You never know with rats." "All right?" "Here we go." "Whoa." "Ew!" "What is that?" "See them moving about?" "Oh." "Uh-oh." "God." "Right beneath our feet as we pitter-patter back and forth to our business every single day." "Oh, my God." "Oh, my God!" "Holy moly." "Yeah." "Now, look, everybody here, there's a block full of restaurants." "Anyone here ever been bitten by a rat?" "Oh." "I've only been bitten once." "Those front teeth are just razor-sharp." "Rats coming out of this catch basin across the street." "You can see them coming and going." "12:00." "Yep." "Right there." "Two, three." "Another one." "Oh, my gosh." "Quite a few of them." "Oh." "Oh, God." "Want to stay back a little." "Uh-oh." "Y'all killing them rats?" "We called 311 a thousand times about this corner right here." "They come and said we don't have a rat problem." " There we go." " Oh, my goodness." "Thousands of rats running around." "Thousands of them." "Kick that bag right there." "Here they come." "If you come late at night, they're running across the street and everything." "Yet they say we don't have a rat problem." "Oh, my God!" "Oh!" "There's always more." "Unbelievable." "Look at all the young ones." "There's more rats in New York city than there is people." "Whoa!" "That was a monster!" "Seen more rats running out of here than how many of us right here!" "Oh, my God." "Look at all that food." "That is untouched Italian New York City bread." "Listen, Saturday nights is the best night to come." "You see thousands of rats out here." "You can stand across the street and just shoot them." "Well, we won't do that." "All right." "Thank you." "Can't get any better than that for testimony." "All right." "So we're going to cut across here." "You know, the future of the rat in my opinion looks very, very bright, and as density increases in our cities and we're becoming crowded conditions are getting better for rats to thrive." "They say in New York city, there's a rat for every" "I think there's more." "8.2 million people." "At least 8.2 million rats." "Rats are basically everywhere." "Down in the subways." "Sewers." "They're watching for a chance to get in." "When they're first coming in, they're looking for food, so they're going to head for the kitchen." "These rats, they're dribbling urine all over your..." "Dishes, all over your knives and forks." "You don't put the sweet 'n low, the sugar away at night." "Rats will get into the bedroom." "Baby goes to sleep with the bottle in its mouth." "I get a call, people are screaming." "Rats got into the kid's crib." "I think it was 8 or 10 rats." "Rats need a space about the size of these two fingers to get that head through." "The rest of them sort of stretches out like jell-o." "And they're in." "If the lid's off the toilet they can swim up." "A rat, when he bites you, he twists." "They don't care if you're poor, rich, or anything in between." "They'll move in." "I've seen them in hospitals." "I've seen them in nursing homes." "I've seen them in hotels." "I've seen them in some of the fanciest restaurants and clubs in the city." "I've seen them in the graveyard." "Wonder what they're eating." "Yeah, let's see what we have." "I got one." "Got another one, here." "I've got one over here, too." "Hey, got another one." "Want to come grab this one, please?" "Let's put them on ice because we're going to take them back to the lab." "433" "my name is Dr. Michael Blum." "I'm an associate Professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at tulane university." "Do we have the count for the liver?" "Tissue from the kidney." "Test for plague." "Okay." "This is season three of the rat project." "Got sample 1249." "The basic objective is to understand the pathogen prevalence and disease emergence in post-Katrina new Orleans." "49?" "49." "Spiny rat mites." "We know that plague is not something that's far afield, so we test for plague, the CDC tests for plague." "Here's the very latest on hurricane Katrina." "80% of new Orleans is under water." "Homes and buildings are now piles of rubble." "Entire neighborhoods..." "The city of new Orleans, a site of devastating human tragedy." "We're going to drop into one of the sites that we've been trapping at now for a little bit more than two years." "Interested in understanding what rats are there and what pathogens they potentially carry." "Okay." "Gloves on." "Should have something around here." "There's certainly a lot of rats." "There's more now than there was before." "The rat population is hyperabundant, even when there are no people." "It's remarkably surprising." "Uh-oh." "We've got one." "This is a roof rat." "You can tell because the ears are larger and the tail is longer." "Let's check these ones." "You have one at the base of the stair." "No." "Did you get another?" "Yep." "Great." "Let's pick that one up." "I got one!" "That's good." "Trap number 522." "Look at his chest." "See, actually, he's got a botfly." "There's these flies that will lay their eggs in the skin." "The larvae will crawl under the skin and grow there." "That gives us something to work on." "Today's a good day." "We are preparing for necropsies and tissue sampling of the rodents that we captured to assess the pathogens that they carry." "Getting a sense of the prevalence of the pathogens across the city." "All right." "We're going to be using isoflurane -- that's a gas anesthesia -- to make them fall asleep." "Once we've anesthetized the rodents, we go through the process of euthanasia." "All right." "I have 542." "331." "Weight 184." "Weight on this one, 318.1." "Ready?" "So adult male, roof rat, full body 37.5." "Tail...17.3." "What kind of wounding?" "Tail's been broken." "There's cuts." "Ears have notches that it looks like it's been in a fight." "Shoulder wound." "Got it." "We note the wounds on the rats because some pathogens, like leptospira, can be transmitted in aggressive contact." "Bruno, what do you have for ectoparasites?" "Fleas can transmit plague." "Very many?" "A good amount." "Yeah, for the Norway rat, there's so many of them." "Okay." "Taking lung?" "I'm going for it." "Open the abdomen and thoracic cavities to expose the..." "Tissues." "The lungs." "Internal parasites." "Be careful." "It can be transmitted to humans." "You see that?" "Hantaviruses are best detected in lung tissue." "Another one." "Hantaviruses are comparable in terms of diagnostics like ebola, so they're hemorrhagic fevers." "This is beautiful." "Look at the stripes." "All right." "I'm cutting into this one." "Oh, yeah." "This one has a bunch of tapeworms." "They look like they're little cysts, but then you can see they're actually long tapeworms." "If those are mobile, put them in D.I. Water." "Then go for the liver." "One, two, three liver cysts." "Confirmed." "Now I need to grab the spleen." "Bruno, you've taken the spleen?" "Spleen's out." "Kidney's out." "Bartonella pathogens can be detected in spleen tissue best." "Kidneys." "We use kidney to assess leptospira." "We can actually test the urine." "Leptospira is carried within a rodent's urine." "If you have just a small abrasion or a small cut, that's enough for you to be infected." "Leptospira is lethal." "From the tail samples, we collect DNA from the rat itself." "Kidney, liver, spleen, tail, all these are used for different pathogens that we assess, some of which are better assessed using different organs than others." "And that's it, so this guy is done." "And this goes into a red bag that will be put in the freezer." "We keep things on hand so that if in the future the CDC wants to come back and do studies, we'll have those archives available for their use." "All right." "I'm cutting into 1521." "The botfly." "Live." "Uh..." "Moving around." "It's a fly larva laid under the skin of the rat by its mother." "Put it in ethanol." "I haven't actually seen one of these before." "We can take a good look on the microscope." "So we have actually made a fair bit of progress in terms of the things that we're finding in rats." "So far, we've been focusing on rickettsia, hanta, bartonella, and leptospira." "Leptospira -- I've tested about 300 rats, and leptospira is across the city." "It's everywhere." "Leptospira is a very severe fever." "If it progresses, it will start deteriorating your internal organs, and you will shut down." "Effectively, you will die." "We're finding prevalence rates in rats that are up to 20% to 25% throughout the city." "20% to 25% is epidemic proportion." "It's something that's a strong public-health concern." "Worms." "When you see these kinds of parasites, it means we've got to watch out because humans can get them." "These parasites will find their way through the urine, find a way through the feces, then that's where humans are going to get in trouble." "Take these guys out of here." "We're going to go to number two." "Looks like a lot bigger." "A flatworm." "We have rats all over the city in restaurants or kitchens where they could contaminate the food." "Eating contaminated food, you can end up with these parasites in your internal organs." "Okay." "Let's take a look at sample number three." "Oh." "That's a big one." "Let's see what we've got here." "So still alive." "These are the type that would grow in your intestines, attach to the intestine wall, and suck the nutrients out of the intestine." "You see the ring of teeth." "There's the opening right there." "Depending on species, these things can grow to several feet long." "If humans eat something contaminated with eggs from this parasite..." "You end up with these things in your system without even knowing about it." "It's really important to know where rats are and what are the exposure risks that we're facing." "And then the ones we have over here are completely different." "And if we looked to ebola or zika as an example of how quickly things are going to change..." "Hmm." "...it's not a question of if, it's a question of when." "647 it's the worst monsoon in recorded Indian history." "Over 5 million people have been affected by the extensive flooding." "Patients in a Mumbai hospital are being treated for high fever, body aches, and vomiting." "These are the symptoms of leptospirosis, a deadly disease carried in the urine of rats, which has been the cause of death of over 60 people." "There was an outbreak of leptospira throughout the Mumbai area." "The worst fear of officials has come true, as over 2,000 people are being treated with rat..." "Unsanitary conditions are what have caused leptospirosis to be taken very seriously." "People with leptospirosis experience high fever, severe headache..." "Leptospirosis is caused by..." "They have treated many children with leptospirosis." "The disease affecting the liver, the liver is probably likely to fail." "With little success with insecticide, the government is working on curbing the rat population with a team of night rat killers." "28 persons will address the rat problem." "These government employees are encouraged to wear gloves, covered shoes, and to take precaution." "Any situation where you are involved with rats..." "Unless you are careful about how you are conducting yourself professionally, you are putting yourself at risk." "These men who are doing this job, it would be mandatory for them to be wearing gloves and shoes." "If they get bitten..." "It is likely to transmit salmonella, typhoid, hemorrhagic fevers, plague..." "Whereas rats can carry a bug for the rest of their life and not get ill." "Once it gets into a human being..." "It becomes ferocious to the point where it will kill the human being." "Each rat killer seeks to rid the streets of 30 rats per night, six days a week, to meet their quota." "Their methods are proving to be cleaner and quicker than traps." "Individuals are compensated upon delivery of expired rats" "540 rupees, or approximately 6 British pounds per night." "I did an experiment years ago, and I wanted to see if it really worked." "So I went and I got..." "I think it was four rats." "I put them in this enclosure, and everything's going good." "We're having a lot of kids." "37 rats." "And just like us, they work as a community." "They have a family hierarchy like we do." "They're intelligent, and they take good care of the kids." "And when we got to 52 rats..." "I took away their food." "What was once a very peaceful environment turns into a hole." "They started to cannibalize each other." "The head guy -- he's not going to die." "The weaker rats are consumed." ""Get over here." "I'm hungry."" "There's no food." "They started eating the babies when they were born." "Um..." "Pleasant memory." "792" "oh!" "Interestingly enough, we've had a few calls, places " "I can't tell you where they were -- but listen, let's put it this way, some of the fanciest places in this city teeming with rats." "The restaurant calls us down, "we've got mice over here."" "Take a look." ""No, you ain't got mice." "You have baby rats."" "They don't believe us, like, well, I'm not treating for mice." "You've got rats." "We had this wonderful..." "Rodenticide called thallium sulfate." "Can't get it no more." "It looked like crushed aspirin." "This poison worked within 30 seconds." "But did we get rid of them all?" "No." "We had to use other methods." "A rat is able to learn from his mistakes." "Now when a poison is put down, rats are very wary." "They look at it three, four days." ""What is that?" "That's something new."" "They'll send one of the weaker rats in," ""go ahead, take a bite."" "Then they watch him." "If Mikey dies..." "They'll urinate on the bait." "Nobody will touch it." "They're just smart." "So decided to go with traps." "Using my favorite genoa salami." "Kill a rat in a trap, the other ones see it." "They're not going to go near the trap too quick after that." "Just proves my point." "Every action on our part is going to cause a reaction on their part." "They're so intelligent, constantly evolving." "It's becoming harder and harder to kill them." "Did a lot of cement work." "Took us six months, closing every hole I could find." "Running contractors, did a lot of sheet-metal work." "Did we get rid of them all up there?" "No." "You've got a rat..." "He's dead, fine." "His friend's coming to the funeral." "We just checked, and we have 20 rats from New York City to collections here to be prepped." "Nine today." "We can just pull out, see what we've got." "I'll grab this one." "These are these strange-colored ones." "So this is the skull from that really big female." "She must have been pretty old because you can see the teeth are fairly worn down, considerably older than a lot of these other guys that we've collected." "We're pretty excited that you guys were willing to take our rats." "And we're happy to have the collection, just to make sure they're preserved for as long as possible." "November 28, 1933." "Says it was contributed by an exterminator." "Probably added it because it was a really strange, like, melanistic dark morph." "Right, right." "As part of my work," "I wanted to understand how they're evolving, which may help us control their populations." "They seem to have evolved a number of adaptations to avoid us killing them." "So there's the rodenticide resistance." "The size variation is amazing." "That's the biggest rat we've seen." "Yeah." "It's remarkable." "THIS IS FROM WEST 47th STREET." "It's huge." "Yeah." "A big breeding female." "Probably..." "Who knows how many rats she contributed to the population." "Pretty huge compared to some of those other ones." "This is its skeleton and its skull." "They really hit upon an evolutionary strategy that no other mammal has, and it's kind of made them one of the most successful species on the planet." "You know, they carry a gene that makes them resistant to and the fact that reproduction time is so quick, it really changes the way we need to handle these pest species." "The scientific community has a long way to go in understanding mutations in rats." "The way we approach our questions about how they're evolving, we bring specimens back to our lab..." "And then we extract the DNA." "We have looked at the one gene in particular that's associated with rodenticide resistance." "The red blocks are the little genetic changes." "Yeah." "Where you find clusters, that's where there's been a lot of change across all or most of the rats, which is what you would predict if they were evolving resistance to poison." "As part of my work, I wanted to collect a reference collection of specimens." "And scientists after us can go back and look at these rats so they can compare their rats in the future to the past." "Still smells a little rotten." "First, we want to prepare a proper specimen." "We prepare them as museum-quality specimens, which is where you save the skin and you stuff it so it's preserved for posterity." "And that way, researchers can continue to come back and look at them." "You sort of got DNA that's frozen in time." "As cities have grown bigger, you can look at how the genes differ." "For example, with a gene associated with rodenticide resistance," "50 years from now, a scientist could go back and look at the specimens that we have collected..." "And see if there's been ongoing evolution." "Beautiful." "We also take out the skeleton." "Hey." "Got our rats." "We have one really big one, and then we have a bunch of smaller ones." "Great." "They are hungry." "So you have a nice, clean skeleton." "We have it cleaned by a colony of beetle larvae." "Last one." "Last one." "Okay." "It's kind of a challenge." "We develop strategies to control or defeat rat populations, but they're going to continually evolve sort of counteradaptations to that." "So it will always be this evolutionary game where we're working against the rat populations, but they're finding ways around it." "Just don't know." "What we do know is that rats are showing these poison-resistant mutations all over the globe." "And it seems to be happening everywhere at the same time." "It's almost as if the rats..." "There's more down that way." "All right." "We have found quite a number of dead or dying animals in this farming area." "And we've been finding high levels of rodenticide in these animals." "That's a major problem." "All right." "Should we go around and check all the baits and the trays?" "Yes." "The farm has a rat infestation." "You can see lots and lots of footprints." "Droppings, as well." "They're very active." "We're particularly interested in this site because these rats are able to eat the most potent rodenticide, and it doesn't have any effect on them." "They're taking massive amounts." "The problem then is that the rats are running around carrying high loadings of rodenticide and the predatory animals consume the rodents that contain rodenticide, and it's actually killing the animals." "Oh, my God." "So I think we're going to need to trap some more." "We need to assess whether or not the use of might have caused a much higher degree of resistance and more mutations in the rat population." "We really don't know." "Yep." "That one's a really good one." "The first process to investigate these rats is we need to get a tissue sample." "We then place in a number of reagents, which essentially dissolves the DNA." "We have the results from the rat tail, and we can see that the DNA bases" ""c," "a," and "g," have changed." "So it's a mutation." "It's that resistance mutation?" "Just the same as the other rats we tracked in this area." "Those animals will be even more resistant." "The population is saturated." "It spreads so rapidly." "It's unlikely to be much time before we start seeing rats far more difficult to control in the field." "It's very, very concerning." "These are the animals that were highly resistant to poison." "They have their litters every three weeks." "11 youngsters in there." "Quite impressive." "These animals need to consume over 2,000 times the amount as normal rats to get the same level of lethality." "What I'm saying, really, is if you can't kill rats in the field, these animals cannot be controlled." "If something in a food chain and it's only us that control it, we've got to do that." "There's no other way." "It's got to be done." "They won't put poison down if they know we're coming." "We go to chicken farms, pig farms, fisheries, anywhere there's a rat problem, basically, we will go and try... and dispatch the rats humanely." "Okay." "Here we are." "This is a lovely old estate." "The keeper informs me that rats around the farm have been taking some of his feed." "They know they're there." "The dogs know." "They know the rats are here." "The way we do it, the rat gets two chances." "It gets killed, or it gets away." "Some pig farms and chicken farms, we take out over 1,000 rats a session." "The excitement of watching the little dogs work." "That's my passion." "What are you saying, Dave?" "There are signs of rats all around." "We'll have a look around." "You can see the tracks..." "Where the rats have been going in and out, taking the farmer's corn." "The feathers of the dead birds, what they've been eating." "Look at these here." "Look." "The droppings here." "It's really big." "That's a sign of an healthy rat." "Right, I think..." "We can show you a nice bit of sport today." "I've got 22 terriers." "Come on, Oliver." "Here." "All of you." "Come on." "Here." "Come on." "All terriers were bred for vermin control." "Where is it?" "Where is it?" "Here, here, here." "They've all got instincts in them." "Good boy." "Good boy." "Where is he?" "You don't have to train a terrier to kill rats." " Here, come on, all of you." " Here." "Let's go." "Here." "Come on." "Have we got everyone?" "Right." "Come on." "There's a lot of people out today enjoying themselves." "It's like we're fox hunting." "It's just an enjoyable thing to do." "It's a part of our culture, our history." "Here, look here, here, here." "Come here." "Look, look, look, look, look." "Where is he?" "There's probably a couple in here." "Come here." "Frankie, look here." "Let's just clear this out." "Have we got any marking there?" "No." "Try and smoke some out, then." "Run, you bugger, run." "Get away from that, you fool." "Aida." "Here, here, here." "Look here." "I bet there's one in there." "He's going to run out." "We're going to kill him." "Just got to be in that sort of four-foot square, doesn't it?" "Isn't it?" "He's got it!" "I think he's got another one, then." "Let it go!" "You ain't eating it, you bastard." "Let it go!" "And again." "Let it go." "Hey!" "There's no nice way of killing any animal." "Put that shovel there, please." "People can kill them with poison." "He's got him." "It's not an instant death." "There's probably more in here." "There he is." "I prefer to kill as many as I can with the terriers." "There's no question it's just the humane way of doing it." "Hey, hey, hey." "It's still alive." "Ah!" "Bastard." "Instant death." "We don't injure it." "Totally humane." "You are taking a life." "You must have respect." "Frank, look." "Even respect the rats." "That was brilliant." "That's enough of that." "Dead." "Good girl." "I think the ladies were more game than the men here." "And again and again." "Let him go." "Let him go!" "Frankie!" "Come on, all of you!" "We will try and solve the rat problem, or at least knock it down." "I'm not trying to justify going out with the dogs and doing it, but where do you stop?" "Do you stop a spider getting a fly and kill all spiders?" "It's the same thing." "However you kill 'em." "You kill 'em but they ain't leaving anytime soon." "What makes them so smart is that's the way God created them." "They've been so successful." "I've got to respect them." "They're going to survive, and in my estimation, they'll do well." "I'll be gone." "They'll be here." "I spent 48 years trying to exterminate them." "You don't know what you're up against." "They're just too well-organized and too damn smart." "I'm no scientist, but if humans went extinct the rats would take over."