Rats feed off of U.K. recession as trash mounts and buildings empty
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April 24 (Bloomberg) -- For British rats, the worst of times has turned out to be the best of times.The vermin more associated with the Dickensian era than modern Britain are thriving, with shuttered shops and half-built housing sites to live in, rotting piles of uncollected garbage for dinner and fewer exterminators sent out to kill them.
“Sometimes I drive into the car park and there are at least 20 of them in the bins,” said Paul Hood, 46, a north London resident. “You see them running away in the headlights. During the day, they just sit in the bushes sunbathing.”
As the biggest economic bust in 60 years fostered a boom for rodents, municipalities were called an estimated 700,000 times to deal with infestations in the last 12 months, compared with 650,000 the previous year, said Peter Crowden, chairman of National Pest Technicians Association Ltd.
The rat population has swollen by 13 percent this year to more than 50 million, one for every person living in England, according to an industry consensus cited by Crowden. Rats and mice are capable of spreading more than 35 diseases, including a fever inducing nausea and muscle aches passed to humans either via a bite or the rodent’s urine.
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