A video of a swarm of rats in a Paris trash bin was published over the weekend by Le Parisien, the city’s daily newspaper, and highlights the growing infestation of vermin in France’s capital city.
The video was taken last month by trash collectors, some of whom say the rats are becoming aggressive.
“For the past year, we’ve seen a proliferation of rats in all the arrondissements on the banks of the Seine,” one trash collector told the newspaper, The Telegraph reported. “One colleague told me that a rat jumped at his throat and another at his arm. To my knowledge, there have been no bites for now but we don’t want to wait until drama strikes.”
The city government has been trying to deal with the growing problem since late 2016, when Parisians began to complain that large numbers of rats had made it unsafe to go to several city parks, The Telegraph reported. The city then closed a number of parks and gardens, placing “environmentally safe” traps and poisons and blocking sewer entrances to try to stem the rising population.
Last September, Paris spent $1.84 million on its rat problem, but it has persisted. Experts say there may be two rats for every person in Paris, or close to 4.5 million of the creatures.
Rats have been tested and found to carry up to 16 diseases and parasites, many of which can affect humans who have direct or indirect contact with them, their droppings, and other traces they leave behind, The Telegraph reported.
Factors in the population increase include restaurants leaving trash on the curb in bags instead of in designated trash bins, the flooding of the river Seine, and environmental regulations that prevent officials from using effective poisons that will reduce populations, The Sun reported.
Paris is the top tourist city in the world.
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