The Windy City is still the “Rattiest City,” according to an informal study.
For the third-straight year, Chicago topped U.S. metro areas in pest-control company Orkin’s Top 50 Rattiest Cities list released this week.
Orkin ranked cities by the amount of rodent treatments the company completed in the year that ended Sept. 15.
While the ranking is less than scientific (and self-serving), there’s other evidence that Chi-Town belongs up there among vermin hot spots.
According to DNAInfo in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city fielded 39,000 rat complaints in 2017, a 30-percent increase over 2016.
“Chicago has tried just about everything to control a burgeoning rat population fueled by a construction boom and a mild winter,” the Chicago Sun-Times wrote last week. “None of it has worked in a city seemingly overrun by rodents.”
Yuck.
Here’s the Top 50.
- Chicago
- New York
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco – Oakland
- Washington, D.C.
- Philadelphia
- Detroit
- Baltimore
- Seattle – Tacoma
- Dallas – Ft. Worth
- Denver
- Minneapolis – St. Paul
- Cleveland – Akron
- Atlanta
- Boston
- Hartford – New Haven
- Portland, Oregon
- Miami – Ft. Lauderdale
- Indianapolis
- Houston
- Milwaukee
- Pittsburgh
- New Orleans
- Cincinnati
- Richmond – Petersburg
- Sacramento – Stockton
- Kansas City
- Charlotte
- Norfolk – Portsmouth – Newport News
- Buffalo
- Columbus, Ohio
- St. Louis
- Raleigh – Durham
- Grand Rapids – Kalamazoo
- San Diego
- Albany – Schenectady
- San Antonio
- Tampa – St. Petersburg
- Rochester, New York
- Nashville
- Champaign – Springfield – Decatur
- Greenville – Spartanburg
- Memphis
- Phoenix
- Syracuse
- West Palm Beach
- Orlando – Daytona Beach
- Madison
- Flint – Saginaw
- Green Bay – Appleton
More than 20 million rodents invade homes each year, Orkin said, and rats can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter.
Keep that in mind while you wonder how your city will fare in next year’s list.
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