Rats putting people off visiting Arrow Valley Lake (From Redditch Advertiser)

Rats putting people off visiting Arrow Valley Lake

3:10pm Tuesday 16th October 2012 in News

A rat at Arrow Valley Lake

A RAT problem is making some people completely avoid Arrow Valley Lake.

The Advertiser has received a number of calls and emails from people who have been to the lake over the last few months and been disgusted with the number of rats scurrying around.

Redditch mum Marie Myers took her daughter to the lake recently and said she was horrified by what she saw.

She said: “There was an area where some foliage seems to have been cleared away recently, near the duck feeding platform, and it appears a rats nest has been disturbed.

“We saw about 10 of them all crawling over each other and they were darting to and from the rubbish bins. I was horrified.

“I will not be going back there until something is done about all these rats.”

Back in August, Steve Williams from Hunt End wrote to the Advertiser, saying: “They say you are never more than 10 yards away from a rat, well, if you are feeding the ducks at Arrow Valley Lake, you can reduce that distance by a factor of 10.”

And said the next time he visited, he was going to wear “wellingtons or bicycle clips, with my bread scraps in one hand and in the other, a cricket bat”.

A council spokesman said: “This was brought to our attention a number of weeks ago and we immediately inspected the site and enlisted a pest control contractor.

“The rats are attracted to this area because visitors feed both wild fowl and carp from the platform providing a steady supply of food for the rodents.

“Because the platform is an ideal habitat for the rats, it makes ‘baiting’ difficult but we began the process straight away – but it does take time for them to take the bait.”