801: Must Be Rats on the Brain
This American Life
00:00
The Dirty Secret of the World's Most Effective Rat Control Program
Joy has 500 locations he inspects and the number of actual infestations he discovers like a real nest with dozens or hundreds of rats once every two years. Back in the first years of the program in the 1950s Karen says the teams would discover 600 infestations a year in the rat control zone along the border. By the 1960s they still needed 250 pest control officers to fan out and kill rats. Today it's just 13 people. One thing that helps them keep the numbers low is the death of the family farm. In the US so many small farmers have gone out of business over the last half century. The remaining farms are really far apart. So if rats go away in
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