And The 'Rattiest City' Is...

Chicago is “a city seemingly overrun by rodents.”

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.

 

  1. Chicago
  2. New York
  3. Los Angeles 
  4. San Francisco – Oakland
  5. Washington, D.C. 
  6. Philadelphia 
  7. Detroit
  8. Baltimore
  9. Seattle – Tacoma
  10. Dallas – Ft. Worth
  11. Denver
  12. Minneapolis – St. Paul
  13. Cleveland – Akron
  14. Atlanta
  15. Boston
  16. Hartford – New Haven
  17. Portland, Oregon
  18. Miami – Ft. Lauderdale
  19. Indianapolis
  20. Houston
  21. Milwaukee
  22. Pittsburgh
  23. New Orleans
  24. Cincinnati
  25. Richmond – Petersburg
  26. Sacramento – Stockton
  27. Kansas City
  28. Charlotte
  29. Norfolk – Portsmouth – Newport News 
  30. Buffalo
  31. Columbus, Ohio
  32. St. Louis
  33. Raleigh – Durham 
  34. Grand Rapids – Kalamazoo 
  35. San Diego
  36. Albany – Schenectady
  37. San Antonio
  38. Tampa – St. Petersburg
  39. Rochester, New York
  40. Nashville
  41. Champaign – Springfield – Decatur
  42. Greenville – Spartanburg 
  43. Memphis
  44. Phoenix 
  45. Syracuse
  46. West Palm Beach
  47. Orlando – Daytona Beach
  48. Madison
  49. Flint – Saginaw 
  50. 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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The brown rat contributed to Orkin naming Chicago the
gallinago_media via Getty Images