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You’ve all probably heard of cat hoarding — that variant of animal hoarding suffered by Crazy Cat Ladies the world over (like this Cat Lady in Siberia, who feeds 130 in her home every day). According to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (yes, really), crazy cat ladies and their obsessive ilk collectively hoard some 250,000 animals at any given time in the United States. Not only do the attendant smells and noises bug neighbors, but the inability for most hoarders to properly care for all their animals is a serious animal welfare issue.
Well, forget about cat hoarding for the moment, and consider this. The West side of Los Angeles has an even more dire problem: rat hoarding. Specifically by two elderly, never-married twin sisters, animal lovers who, as they grew too old to care for the dogs and larger animals they once took in off the streets, moved on to caring for the rats that appeared on their property. And these women don’t live in the Bronx or somewhere you might not be surprised to hear was rat-infested; they live in the tony LA suburb of Pacific Palisades. (There are tee-shirts sold here which read “If you’re rich, you live in Beverly Hills; if you’re famous, you live in Malibu; and if you’re lucky, you live in Pacific Palisades.” Which kind of sums it up.) But when a young couple and their baby moved in next door to the twin rat-hoarders a few years ago, they uncovered a dark secret that may be responsible for the wealthy side of LA’s recent rat boom. The LA Weekly ran a great, horrifying story about it a few weeks ago; what follows are some of the juiciest excerpts.
The number of wild rats the Barthel sisters bred in one year— if they began with a single male and a single female — is, by the association’s calculations, 2,258. That number of rats would be capable of devouring 10,931 pounds of food and excreting 56,400 rat droppings. But the sisters fed the rats for much longer than a year. They did so from the time they returned from Santa Ynez in 2002 until late 2007 — not to mention possible rat-feeding during the decades that Margaret continued teaching in Redondo to support their refuge in Santa Ynez.
Theoretically, during a second year, 2,258 rats in the Palisades could grow “a thousand-fold,” to more than two million rats, says Greg Baumann of the association. That’s only a mathematical figure, because the food needed to sustain two million rats would be impossibly huge, and cats were in the area. But, estimating conservatively, the two sisters added tens of thousands of rats to L.A.’s tony Westside. And perhaps far, far more.
Trouble was, even when the neighbors discovered what had happened — and that the previous owner knew of but hadn’t disclosed the problem to them (lawsuit!) — they could never get the city to do anything about it. The sisters refused to come to the door for inspectors, and despite being by most accounts pretty crazy, had hired a savvy lawyer to help them out. They seemed untouchable; the city seemed apathetic. Finally, the neighbors threatened publicity, and the sisters caved. They agreed to let exterminators come in and take care of the rat problem in their house, fomented by their shopping-cart’s-worth-of-dog-food weekly feeding regimen.
A crew wearing facemasks and hazmat suits emerged pale-faced and sober, as if they had just witnessed the aftermath of a biohazard spill — which, in a way, they had. Scott Denham says they hauled several large garbage bags heavy with dead rats from the bedrooms, kitchen, attic, basement and guesthouse, as the Denhams took photos.
But the story’s not quite over yet — it gets weirder.
Apparently, spawning a massive rat population on L.A.’s Westside doesn’t disqualify homeowners’-insurance policies with State Farm. State Farm is bankrolling the Barthels’ legal defense, setting in motion preparations for a bizarre yet entertaining trial, probably this year. Attempts by the two sides to reach a settlement were stymied by the Barthels’ unnerving request: The Denhams would have to withdraw their demand for a permanent injunction — whose only stipulation is that the sisters not harbor rats.
“Since 1958, we’ve had rats,” Marjorie told Barak Lurie during her deposition in May. “I’ve lived with rats since 1958, honey…. When I got the house in [1958], that’s the day I started feeding all the animals. And I fed them as long as I lived there.”
You can read the whole story here, and see video taken by the neighbors of rats running rampant here:
Illustration by Chris Rahn.
Comments (14)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
Hoarding and breeding tens of thousands of domestic rats would be bad enough…but WILD rats? Ew!
posted by August on 8-22-2008 at 8:20 am
Dude. Some of those rats are as big as cats. Maybe that’s where they got mixed up–their eyesight is going!
posted by Jen on 8-22-2008 at 8:50 am
I’m seriously considering changing my insurance from State Farm to something else!
posted by JT on 8-22-2008 at 9:41 am
So…I am curious what State Farm has to do with anything. I’ll have to read the whole article. What would State Farm be paying for in a policyholder’s legal troubles? Doesn’t make any sense.
posted by bre on 8-22-2008 at 10:43 am
I just threw up in my mouth.
posted by Megan on 8-22-2008 at 5:07 pm
Good for State Farm!
posted by Michelle on 8-23-2008 at 11:30 am
i just threw up in my mind…
posted by jane on 8-23-2008 at 5:19 pm
If I lived next door to that disgusting rat house, I would immediately sign up to foster as many cats as possible, but not before putting out my own rat food consisting of large doses of poison.
posted by Sarah on 8-24-2008 at 6:06 pm
Holy carp, did anyone else read the comments over there.
There are people defending the council meeting about how their rules work for things brought up during the meeting and why their meeting worked that way, completely ignoring the fact that these two were breeding 1000’s of freaking rats and it took a guy to personally go out of his way to get it taken care of which is the critical part of the article.
I mean, damn, I get a freaking nastygram for letting my grass grow above 6 inches from the Board of Health and a stiff fine if I don’t have it taken care of in the next 3 days. I’m not breeding disease machines.
posted by John on 8-26-2008 at 2:53 pm
The video says that the Denhams paid 1.8 million for their house. If I paid that much for a house, I would push whatever buttons needed to be pushed to get rid of those rats. In addition to the fact that they had a baby, would you let your child play in the yard with thousands of rats running around next door? A house that you paid 1.8 million dollars to live in??
posted by greenstrawberries on 8-27-2008 at 3:21 am
Anyone who has worked in EMS, Firefighting, or the police force has seen things this bad and worse. I, personally, have been brought to vomiting by the state of some houses. Raw sewage, tobacco spit, and general neglect.
posted by KT on 9-25-2008 at 7:00 am
I dont understand how someone can defend this… This is a major health issue! Not to mention comepletely disgusting! These two women need to be evicted and sent to a nursing home where they can no longer endanger themselves or their neighbors.
One thing not addressed in the article: What in the world is State Farm´s reason for supporting these two nut jobs???
Now, excuse me while I throw up a little.
posted by GTT on 9-25-2008 at 12:34 pm
Honestly, I think it’s cute… I had some pet rats as a young girl and those sweet little things can be smarter than dogs! Not to mention, hoarding isn’t about the number of animals (or else LAAS could very well be in violation) but about the conditions the creatures are living in. If there are many dead, dying, injured and sick animals then yes, it’s a hoarder. If they’re all healthy animals, then they’re doing an okay job. I’m sure you internet trolls will have a blast with this comment, eh?
posted by Katie on 6-30-2009 at 1:33 am
i would be the first person to defend the right to own rats as i have a few myself, but the owners need to be RESPONSIBLE owners. that means separating the males from the females, keeping them indoors, and keeping their living area clean. when the rats breed without supervision, the results are health and temperment problems. when the rats are allowed to go outside unsupervised, you run risks of mingling with diseased wild rats. When their living area isn’t kept clean, the health of the human and the rat suffers. These women have set the rat loving world back to the dark ages when the rat was feared. And just like with hoarding cats and dogs, if you do not interact with them, they become feral and wild, mistrusting of humans.
I know people with large populations of rats, but the rats are clean, separated by gender and not allowed to interact unless spayed or neutered, their free roam time is supervised, and all the animals are well socialized (meaning they crave loving human contact).
posted by angel on 8-23-2009 at 12:54 pm