Starting as early as Monday, January 17, 2011, Caltrans and/or the contractor will start clearing the vegetation from along the construction zone on the 605 Freeway. The last time Caltrans tried that, they were so overrun with rats the project was halted until the rodents could be eliminated.
The Orange County Vector Control District is the agency responsible for rat control and District Manager Michael G. Hearst does not expect a problem when construction starts on Monday. This time, they have placed the bait out before the ground clearing is set to start.
But, there is no way to measure how many rats have been killed by the bait. “We wouldn’t go looking for dead rats,” Hearst told OC180NEWS. And these are big rats. “Head to tail length – maybe 12 to 14 inches,” he told us.
Nevertheless, Hearst doesn’t expect a rat problem this time around. “We think we’ve knocked the population down to where there’s not going to be much of an impact at all,” he said yesterday. “It worked the last time we tried it. We never heard from anybody complaining about rats. We know we’ve lessen the impact, I don’t know that it will be absolute like it was last time.”
Then there are the coyotes. The fear is that these pet killing predators are also living the good life in the overgrown brush along the freeway – and shopping for dinner in the parks and backyards of Rossmoor. The Rossmoor Predator Management Team, a local resident’s group concern with pet and people safety in Rossmoor, documented at least 34 pet killings last year.
For the unincorporated orphans of Rossmoor, the government agency on which the residents must rely for coyote control is the California Department of Fish and Game. (See our related articles below about the lack of local authority for things like animal control for unincorporated areas such as Rossmoor.) While Caltrans has distributed to the media a statement indicating they are working with Fish and Game to control any possible coyote migration, we tried in vain yesterday to interview somebody from either Caltrans or Fish and Game to get specifics of what, if anything, they are planning to do. One source told us yesterday “they have been in meetings all day to figure out what they are going to do.”
Of course, the neighboring cities of Seal Beach and Los Alamitos can quickly order up trapping or other protective measures as they see fit. “We’re just going to keep an eye on it,” Los Alamitos City Manager Jeff Stewart told OC180NEWS late yesterday. “I don’t know what to expect. It will affect Rossmoor more than us, but we’ll keep an eye on it.”
The situation is essentially the same in Seal Beach. “We have Long Beach animal control that does animal control services for the city and they have been alerted to the situation and can respond if needed,” said Seal Beach Director of Public Works Sean Crumby. But he added “I believe they have not done anything specific for this situation.”
The most important thing residents can do to keep coyotes and rats away is to avoid leaving outside any food or water which might attract the animals.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
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