If your trashcan has an approximately rat-sized hole on its lid I will give you a single guess at how it got there. This is a serious problem because rats love trash. They literally eat it up. So when your trash can has this hole in it, it is like a flashing neon OPEN sign to rats telling them that a 24 hour diner is here for the patronizing.
Which brings me to what you can do to address this problem. The city will replace your can free of charge if you use 311. (Now, there’s a separate question about 311. I’ve been hearing a lot of reports of the app being essentially non-functional. So I would recommend either calling 311 on the phone or using the webpage, which I can confirm is working right now). So please, if you’ve got a can with a hole, reach out to 311.
But, you say, “I don’t have a rat-sized hole in my can. In fact I don’t have any hole in my can. What can I do to help keep the rat population down?”
Well I’ve got good news for you too.
You can reach out to the city rat abatement program to have them come out and inspect your property to identify any possible rat attractions that it might contain. Reach them at rodent.control@dc.gov. You can also do this by 311 by requesting rodent inspection and treatment. Again, it’s all free.
Better yet, if you and your neighbors can organize and make the request together, the city inspectors can come and make a more comprehensive inspection of your whole block. While it’s great to reduce the rat attractions on your own property, if your neighbor’s property is still a problem, you’ll still have a problem too.
Rats has been here forever, and they’ll likely be he forevermore. But there don’t have to be so many. And the only way to get the numbers down is if we all pitch in together and do our parts. So get cracking!
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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