How Cities Are Using Dry Ice To Kill Rats (usatoday.com)

Some of the United States' biggest cities have resorted to using dry ice to kill rats. Since dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) turns into a gas, sanitation officials simply need to drop chunks of it into rat infested burrows and let science do the rest. Longtime Slashdot reader mi writes: USA Today reports: "Earlier this week, USA TODAY observed Chicago sanitation department workers at one of the city's oldest parks scoop chunks of smoking dry ice into a burrow before quickly covering the entry and exit holes with dirt and newspaper to stop any rats from escaping as the -109.3-degree Fahrenheit gas dissipated. Sanitation workers say they treat burrows during morning hours, when rats are less active and most likely to be huddled inside the burrows. The asphyxiated dead rats then decompose in place and out-of-sight of city denizens who count the disease-carrying vermin among the vilest of indignities of urban living. 'We are seeing 60% fewer burrows in areas where we are using the dry ice,' said Charles Williams, Chicago's streets and sanitation commissioner. 'It's more environmentally friendly, and it's very humane on the rodents as well.'" Humane or not, what is so especially "undignified" about rats? What makes them worse, than, for example, cats, deer or wild horses?

Comments

Not a nice way to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Asphyxiation via C02 is an absolutely HORRIBLE way to die, regardless of the creature. There's a reason Carbogen (C02/Oxygen mix) is used to induce anxiety to test out anxiolytics. I mean I get that they need to solve the infestation problem but can't we choose a method that isn't also a completely inhumane method?

Re:Not a nice way to die

[Anonymous Coward]

who fuckin cares. They're rats.

Re:Not a nice way to die

[BarbaraHudson]

We better hope we don't encounter aliens that feel the same way about us and see us as pests on "their" new planet.

Re:Not a nice way to die

[cfalcon]

If technologically superior aliens come here wanting earth (or whatever), I don't particularly care about how humane their human-extermination methods are. I'm more concerned about if our alien-extermination methods are effective enough to stop them, and perhaps whether or not our methods of alien-extermination are MORE effective than their methods of human-extermination.

Re:Not a nice way to die

[ShanghaiBill]

We better hope we don't encounter aliens that feel the same way about us and see us as pests on "their" new planet.

What is your point? That aliens will treat us better if we are nice to rats?

Real life is not like Star Trek.

Re:Not a nice way to die

[Immerman]

Any aliens capable of crossing interstellar distances are almost certainly quite capable of exterminating humanity without getting anywhere near close enough for us to strike back. Heck, just lob a few largish asteroids at our major cities and wait for a year or two for the resulting "nuclear" winter and general chaos to starve most of the population, and probably cause the near total collapse of civilization in the process. The survivors would then be in no position to fight the hordes of von-neuman kill-bots that had been replicating while they waited.

And that's assuming technology scarcely more advanced than what we already have. Given the age of the galaxy, any aliens we encounter here are as likely to be thousands or millions of years more advanced than us.

The entire "humanity overthrowing alien conquest" meme is a storyteller's fantasy with no rational basis in reality.

Re:Not a nice way to die

[Immerman]

>They kill instantly; you'll never find a mousetrap with a live rodent wiggling around in it.

Bullshit. I've had many a mousetrap go off when I was nearby, that left the mouse screaming for several minutes before it died. Yes, my squeamishness exceeds my compassion, and I failed to finish them off more promptly by other means. Not my proudest self-realization.

Totally agree about the glue traps though, those things are just evil. If you're going to murder something, you should at least aim for doing so humanely.

What's undignified about rats?

[fredrated]

They carry disease, eat infrastructure, chew holes in your house, shit and pee on your stuff, chew holes in your stuff, eat and contaminate your food, and many more things I can't fit into the margin of this book.

Worse

[Kohath]

Cats, deer, and wild horses generally won't climb walls and crawl into your house. And they don't share rats' long history of spreading disease and eating grain from storage containers. Deer are food. Horses can be tamed and used to do valuable work. Cats can be tamed and used to protect grain from rodents.

Re:Very cruel

[cfalcon]

No one is trying to kill your pets. Rats are filthy and violent. They destroy food, spread disease, and even hurt the animals we WANT to keep around and well cared for. Varmints are going to be killed, if you don't do that you don't even have a civilization.

You definitely speak like someone who has never had to deal with an actual infestation, or thought much about that situation much.

Re:Very cruel

[cfalcon]

> If there's a bug, I catch it and release it outside

What if there's fifty bugs? What if there's a hundred bugs and a dozen mice? Someone is keeping your apartment free of bullshit parasitic creatures that spread disease and filth. It's not you, apparently, but someone is doing the fucking job out of your sight.