Paris: Paris is waging war on a plague of rats that has forced municipal authorities to close nine parks while they deal with the fast-multiplying vermin.
The unprecedented outbreak has prompted the town hall to launch an "immediate, targeted and large-scale action plan" to eradicate the crisis.
It has been estimated that central Paris has two rats for every one of its 2.2 million inhabitants, but most of the time they remain out of sight in sewers.
However, in recent weeks, growing numbers have taken to inhabiting central parks and gardens, including the Champs de Mars by the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Saint Jacques next to Chatelet, where tourist litter offers rich pickings.
The head of Paris's environmental health service attributed the population rise partially to Left-wing mayor Anne Hidalgo's push for more green spaces as these were "perfect places for rats to thrive", and to new European regulations that clamp down on the types of traps and poison used in public spaces.
Doctor Georges Salines also said rubbish bins that are now transparent due to terror concerns make it easier for rats to thrive.
Images of emboldened furry beasts foraging in Paris's green spaces published in Le Parisien, the capital's daily newspaper, have fuelled widespread discontent.
The spectacle is another blow to the image of the City of Light in a week in which it suffered its worst bout of pollution in a decade.
"In 40 years doing this job, it's the first time I've seen so many rats," said Gilles Demodice, municipal pest controller. "When you see that many up above, it means it's pretty crowded down there," he said.
Eradicating the vermin is "impossible", Paris town hall admitted in a statement, but reducing their number "significantly" can be achieved. As a result, a string of these parks and gardens are in the process of being closed off while a host of "environmentally friendly" traps and poisons are laid and sewer entrances blocked.
Dr Salines said that while they carried no serious illnesses such as plague, the rats posed "a real threat" to hygiene, but also the mental wellbeing of Paris residents, given the number of people with phobias.
Pest controllers used to drop biscuits of poison directly into rats' nests and seal them up, but that technique is no longer allowed, forcing authorities to instead lay black plastic boxes of poison among the bushes, which the rats appear to ignore.
He added that perhaps the worst culprits behind the boom were those who fed pigeons in the park, and by extension, rats. Dr Salines told Le Parisien: "These compulsive feeders are a sanitary catastrophe."
Pierre Falgayrac, rodent expert and author of Of Rats and Men, said the animals got a bad press but were in fact clean and self-regulating as they stop reproducing when resources - water, food and nesting options - are scarce.
"It's neither an invader nor a conqueror," he told Le Monde.
The only illness it can transfer to man is leptospirosis via a bacteria in its urine that can lead to pulmonary haemorrhages. But this was rare, he added.
Mr Falgayrac suggested four measures: placing biocides in sewers near food outlets and ensuring bait was more appetising than the leftovers themselves; putting mechanical traps that drown rats but pose no risks to humans, in parks, cleaning pavements twice a day and treating construction sites a month before works begin to avoid rats surfacing.
He predicted these would bring the ratio of rats per inhabitant down to one "within three months", after which "we won't see them come out at night any more".
Telegraph, UK