Rat Jumps Into Baby Stroller in Dupont Circle

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ON MOST DAYS of the week, Jim McGrath can be found taking a coffee break on the outer ring of benches in Dupont Circle. And while he says he tries to sit away from the "gigantic rat holes" in the section of the park opposite the Sun Trust Bank, it's not uncommon for some of the circle's rodent residents to make their presence known.

Until last week, McGrath had never seen a rodent jump into a baby stroller. But last Thursday, just as a woman momentarily left an infant unattended to throw something away in a nearby trash can, a rat quickly took interest in the stroller, or perhaps, as McGrath theorizes, the baby formula on board. "Whether it was the bottle or the baby" the rat was interested in, "the peril for the child was very, very serious," he recounted to Express in an interview on Tuesday.

McGrath, who is chairman of the D.C. Tenants Advocacy Coalition, sprang into action, as did a group of homeless men who often hang out on Dupont Circle's outer-ring benches. "We screamed and stomped." And while that got the creature's attention, "it wasn't a very terrorized rat," and was in no immediate hurry to leave.

The rat did, however, finally make its exit. McGrath informed the woman what had happened and encouraged her to file a complaint with the city. The child was apparently not harmed.

But the situation, which has generated quite a bit of online discussion on the neighborhood's Yahoo! Group message board in recent days, raises a very good question: Who is responsible for rat control in Dupont Circle?

It's trickier to answer than you'd think.

McGrath fired off a letter to the District's Department of Health, figuring that the agency is responsible for rat abatement efforts in Dupont Circle's park. Not so, says LaShon Seastrunk, a department spokeswoman: "Unfortunately, we don't have jurisdiction over the circle."

Technically, Dupont Circle's park falls under the authority of the National Park Service, which controls 6,848 acres of land inside the District's boundaries. But, "the jurisdiction ends at the asphalt," said Bill Line, a neighborhood resident and spokesman for the National Park Service's National Capital Region. "Unfortunately, rats don't understand that distinction."

Line said that the rat problem is two-fold. First: "Rats are going to go where the food is. If you remove the food, then there won't be any rats. ... It's a human being problem." He said a that if there was a ban on food in Dupont Circle's park, the rat population might drop. But that would be a drastic action, Line said — one that would likely raise the community's ire.

The second part of the problem is the waste generated from the surrounding neighborhood's array of restaurants. Line said that while the circle is indeed within NPS' jurisdiction, the neighborhood rodent problem is an issue for the D.C. government to tackle.

Seastrunk contends that the D.C. government is making measurable progress in the war against rats. The Department of Health's rat control program has been focusing on select areas of the Dupont Circle neighborhood for its Community Hygiene Pilot Program.

Since the program went into effect, the area it covers has seen a 95 percent reduction in rats, Seastrunk said. The targeted area includes the 1600 blocks of Connecticut Avenue and 19th Street NW, as well as stretches of Q Street NW and Florida Avenue.

"But you can't just lay out a mousetrap," Seastrunk said. "It's a project driven by community participation."

Through the effective use of chemical and non-chemical treatments, Seastrunk said neighborhoods working with the city can effectively control their rodent population. But businesses, especially those serving food, have to be proactive to create sanitary environments that deny rats easy pickings when they're hungry. In a targeted rat abatement zone in Georgetown, for instance, a row of businesses on M Street NW have a shared trash compactor, which helps keep alley waste under control.

In 2007, 3,391 rat complaints were filed with the D.C. government, an increase of 8 percent over 2006. Seastrunk said the increase in complaints isn't necessarily tied to a rise in the city's rat population, but is more likely a combination of increased public awareness about how to file rat complaints with the city and D.C.'s recent warmer winters. Typically, bitter-cold winters act as "a natural exterminator," she said.

The Department of Health is encouraging D.C. residents who see rats to call 311 and file a complaint. Each incident will be assigned a tracking number, which in turn helps the city's rat control crews better measure the scope of a neighborhood's rodent problems.

"This isn't something you have to live with," Seastrunk said.

McGrath, who said he's filed many complaints in recent years about rats in Dupont Circle, hopes that the baby stroller incident will serve as a wake-up call to the D.C. government and the National Park Service to take action. But he said he fears that the incident will get bogged down in jurisdictional squabbling, so he isn't holding out much hope. "I don't think they're getting a handle on the problem."