FILE PHOTO
Image Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/ Zeynel Cebeci
July 21, 2025 - 6:00 AM
Kathy Blannin McKenzie is an avid gardener in Penticton who lost her hard work to rats this year and is not having great luck ridding them from her yard.
Rats recently chewed through her marigolds and lobelia flowers, and lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and cucumbers.
“They take one or two bites out of everything and its ruined,” she said. “At first, they ate all the little plant seedlings then moved onto whatever was in bloom. They don’t care, they eat everything.”
McKenzie has grown gardens on her small lot for two decades, and although she has had problematic rats in the past, this is the worst year for damages.
“I usually don’t see rats helping themselves to my garden until maybe August and last year all I lost was my eggplants,” she said. “They needed one more night to ripen and the next morning the rats had eaten them. I’ve never had them demolish my garden like this.”
This week she put out snap traps which killed a few of them. She doesn’t want to put out poison because it can get into the ecosystem. Until two months ago she had a cat keeping the rats at bay and is considering getting another one.
“I only caught one last night and two the night before, and I’m hoping to get more tonight,” she said. “I think I got the one that has been mowing through my marigolds.”
Tomato plants were ruined by rats in a Penticton garden.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Kathy McKenzie
Ten years ago, she had to hire an exterminator because a neighbour was hanging bird feeders that attracted rodents. In her neighbourhood are a couple of rundown sheds where rats and mice live.
“You have a slum landlord, the sheds get derelict and fill up with rats and mice, and when the building is finally plowed over, where do you think those rats go?”
She said rats are a real problem and a cost for homeowners who keep their properties clean but end up paying for exterminators, traps and the loss of vegetables.
“I spent money on those plants and that nice big fat tomato was supposed to be dinner last night,” she said. “It’s down to the skin and it chomped on the other one and now I have a bunch of green tomatoes in my house I hope will ripen.”
The two species of rats causing problems across the province are the Norway rat and roof rat which were introduced to Canada through European settler ships in the 1800s, and it isn’t news their populations have been increasing over the years.
They can damage buildings, electrical wires and crops with teeth that are sharp enough to chew through metal. They prey on livestock, carry and spread a variety of diseases and a breeding pair of them can produce more than 900 offspring within a single year.
The province of Alberta has a rat free policy where if a rat sighting is reported, a control staff member will remove it, but that policy doesn’t exist in BC.
Matthew Wright with Orkin Canada in Kelowna deals with rat populations every year and confirmed populations are still out of control in the BC Interior and it is likely too late for a policy to be effective.
“I wish I could say things have improved but I can’t,” he said. “The province isn’t making a plan and I can’t see them doing it now just because of the cost it would involve,” he said. “There is always hope but I think that time has come and gone, it’d be pretty pricey.”
The heads of the marigolds on this plant in Penticton were chewed off by rats.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Kathy McKenzie
Every fall, Orkin Canada releases a list of the top 25 rattiest cities in Canada based on the number of commercial and residential rodent treatments the company carried out the previous year.
Last year in the BC Interior, Kelowna was ranked third while Vernon was at number 14.
The year before, Kelowna was ranked third, Vernon was at number 7, Kamloops at 13, Penticton at 18 and Lake Country in nineteenth place.
To prevent rodents, it's recommended residents cut back shrubbery one metre from exterior walls to eliminate hiding spots, eliminate moisture sources like clogged gutters, seal up cracks and possible entry points to homes and keep properties clean of food.
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