In Vitry-sur-Seine, ferrets are used to hunt rats

“The rats cross the street all day, they don’t run away, they make their living, quiet” says this resident of the Robespierre slab, in Vitry-sur-Seine, in the Val-de-Marne. Local residents have to deal with these new occupants, who are more and more numerous. For the social landlord of the district, their presence is at the construction site of the Grand Paris express. Rodents have dug a whole network of tunnels despite several rat extermination campaigns. A problem that the semi-public company in Vitry-sur-Seine has decided to tackle head on by using an original method .

This eco-responsible approach is based on the use of ferrets. ” After having put nets on the holes that the rats have dug, I introduce the ferret which will scare them away. Rats gon’ get in these nets, then I catch ’em alive explains Alexandre Raynal, breeder in the Gers. He is one of only two service providers in France to use this technique. The victims are then locked in black boxes to avoid stressing them, then euthanized by introducing carbon dioxide.

The passage of the ferret is durable because the smell it leaves in the galleries prevents colonies of rats from settling there. A natural process that avoids the use of polluting chemicals, already used on boats in the 15th and 16th centuries. In France, this natural deratization has already proven itself in several cities, in particular in Toulouse.