{"id":162207,"date":"2015-01-05T12:30:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T07:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/?p=162207"},"modified":"2015-01-05T12:30:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T07:30:33","slug":"rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/rats\/","title":{"rendered":"Rats!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A.

A. Majeed\u2014AFP<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

One Pakistani has made it his mission to rid Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa\u2019s provincial capital of rodents.<\/h6>\n

The people of Peshawar have lived through countless bombings, shootings and kidnappings in recent years, but now a new peril stalks the streets\u2014huge house rats.<\/p>\n

Residents of the city, on the frontline of Pakistan\u2019s battle against homegrown Taliban militants, say the rodents have eaten countless chickens, bitten dozens of adults, spread disease and even killed a baby. But help is at hand in the stocky form of Naseer Ahmad.<\/p>\n

Armed with a hoe, wheelbarrow and plastic gloves and accompanied by his three young daughters, the 40-something Ahmad is waging a dogged battle against the rats of Peshawar\u2014and says he\u2019s killed more than 100,000 in the past 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is my mission and I took it on after I saw my friend taking his wife to hospital because she was bitten by a rat,\u201d said Ahmad while on a mission in the city\u2019s densely populated Zaryab neighborhood. \u201cHer medical treatment cost him Rs. 5,000 and she had to have an anti-rabies injection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rats are nine to 12 inches long, almost the same again when you include the tail. \u201cThey are everywhere, in the streets, in markets and in shops,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n

The rat-hunter says they attack at night and escape before dawn, damaging the fabric of houses and shops, contaminating food and biting women and children.<\/p>\n

In past, the rat numbers in the city were limited but monsoon flash floods in the surrounding countryside in recent years have driven them downtown. Many make their home in an open sewer that flows through the city and come out at night, gnawing with their large teeth and scurrying about in poor neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

As night falls, Ahmad begins his hunt, tracking the rats on foot\u2014street by street, house by house and shop by shop. He takes a piece of bread, sprinkles sugar on it and sprays it with a chemical mixture.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are actually immune to local poison now, so I have to apply my own formula,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n

While Ahmad and his daughters lay the bait, further down the narrow grubby street, resident Gul Zada patches up holes chewed by rats in the floor of his house. Other than structural damage, Zada said rats killed his infant nephew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey bit my nephew last year, he was one and a half years old, but we took him to hospital and he died there,\u201d said Zada. Zada\u2019s grandfather Faqir Gul said everyone has traps in their houses, but locals say Ahmad is the only effective resistance force.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey attack like an army and come around 10 o\u2019clock at night,\u201d said Ammanullah Khan, a tailor who makes leather jackets, complaining the rats chewed through his stock.<\/p>\n

Ahmad lays the poisoned bread in corners, in front of shops and all other places where the rats can sneak in. The morning after comes the clear up, and Ahmad\u2019s formula seemed to do the trick. Residents could be seen collecting dead rats with shovels and hoes and throwing them in a street corner.<\/p>\n

Ahmad gathered up to 100, pitching the dead rats in his wheelbarrow using a hoe. He put them in plastic bags and buried them in a field. He might be dedicated, and popular with residents, but so far Ahmad\u2019s efforts are strictly unofficial\u2014and unpaid by the authorities.<\/p>\n

But he remains undeterred. \u201cI have no resources and no help from government but its more than a mission for me,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Pakistani has made it his mission to rid Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa\u2019s provincial capital of rodents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":162211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,54],"tags":[6878,8117,448,57,9465,445,1954,7856,9464],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/peshawar-rat-problem.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pakistanstandard.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}