June 7, 2026 • 10 mins
One expert has offered his insights into why there's a growing rat problem impacting Aucklanders.
Residents of Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Westmere have noticed a significant rise in rodent numbers around their homes, and they've taken their concerns to social media.
Pest control expert Craig says environmental changes and urbanisation has lead to the rats adapting to the situation.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk z'b follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We're talking about this rat explosion in parts of Auckland
and a suggestion from the former housewife of New Zealand
and also the founder of the Cat Foundation of New
Zealand and Batlee Burton, saying that we need more cats
on the job. So I eight hundred eighty ten eighty.
What's the rat situation like in your place? And what
are you doing about it?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
E one hundred eighty ten eighties and number to cool?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Gooday, Craig, how's it going now?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're a pest controller and things are exploding at the moment.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Oh yeah, they're pretty busy, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So what's causing the current increase in rat activity?
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Pretty much just urban living, guys, Just the fact that
we're all crammed in a city full of food. Mess
changes an environment and sort of changes in the activity
around the rats create change a lot of the time.
Rats and neophobic, so that means that they are acutely
aware of changing their environment and the environment changes. So
(01:10):
do we Yeah, we've got three main rats in Auckland. Well,
I say, Noory Indians healand the main two rats that
are causing the problems and the Norway rats and ship rats.
So ship rats are commonly known as roof rats. They're
black and they kind of come into your house. They'll
(01:30):
sneak around under your house, up through your walk cavities
and into your roof space. They can also get great climbers,
so they can climb up bushes and trees and jump
two meters onto your rooftop and squeezing through your roofline
stuff like that. The big ones are called Norway rats.
They're like a brown rat. I've seen one of those
(01:50):
with the circumference of a rugby ball well over a
foot long. And they're also they also sneak into the
house and start chewing on things as well. And what
was the third one, ah, the Curei rats. And that's
a Pacific rat they call it. But that's usually only
common in the South Island down South and a few
(02:11):
of our so little islands speak with around.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You here, And they got missed. They get messed up
by the Norway rats and the ship rats. Right, those
little ones.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Well, to be honest, they all sort of beat each
other up, mate, and they're all they're all looking for
food sources. They're all trying to survive, and unfortunately there's
there tends to be a bit of a crossover for us.
Most people don't well probably don't want to be aware
of the fact that, you know, when you go to
bed at night and you jump into bed and kiss
your wife to sleep and petun your lights off and
(02:40):
pull your blankets up, you've got rats circling your house
every night. You know there they're moving through, they're moving
around your fence lines. They are they're looking for voids
and opportunity, just like like most most of the critics.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Are before hit when text has said before is a
rat watching you right now?
Speaker 4 (03:01):
There is? And you know what rats are quote fearless
of us too, So when they get used to us,
they they mimic our behavior a little bit. They hide
away up in our roof spaces, and when we're active,
they're quiet, and when we go to bed, that's when
they get busy. And so quite often people don't even
know they have rats until they start seeing infrastructural issues
(03:23):
in the house or potential things like they go away
over Christmas. We always get a big spike at Christmas,
because there's a change when the activity in that space changes,
So the rats pick up on that. And quite often
people come home after holiday turn on the dishwasher or
the washing machine and flood the house out because the
rats have been in there shimming all the pipes out,
(03:43):
trying to get the water and stuff like that. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, I just get had a new kitchen put in,
and when we remove the old one, we found that
rats had been having a good go at the wires.
And so what are they doing? Like when they do
things like that they eat the plastic around a wire?
What are they trying to get out of that? Because
they can't go? They're getting sustenance from it, are they?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I tell you why they do it. It's because it's
a natural survival mechanism for them, so that they have
their in sizes never stopped growing and they don't chew.
But they don't chew. If they don't gnaw, then their
teeth get too long and it can actually prevent them
from being at to eat and other things. So it's
more of a survival mechanism and a kind of an
habitual habit that they have of chewing on things. So
(04:26):
I've seen them chew through sheet rock, galvanized iron. I've
seen them chew through you know, four by two six
x two boards that are you know, an inch and
a half thick. They if they want to get to somewhere,
they'll find the pathway there.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
They're pretty pretty damn you know, invasive in that sense.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And what do you reckon about the solution to rats
introducing more domestic cats? Is that a realistic option in
an Auckland sabbath?
Speaker 4 (04:56):
You know what? And de fine balance of trying to
make sure that we protect the environment, we protect the public,
and we protect ourselves. And with rat I think it's
not as simple as something like that where you're trying
to change the ecology of an environment, because unfortunately you're
going to get a lot of collateral damage, you know,
(05:18):
And that's that's the terrifying thing about it. And the
same with the baiting side of it, where you know,
I highly suggest to people if they're going to go
and have problems with rats, by all means, put some
bait stations outside domestic ones with debait inside. Don't put
empty baits throwing them under the house or into your
in your gardens and stuff like that because the actual
(05:40):
crossover or secondary poisoning is really terrible. You know, it
affects a lot of our endemic species in New Zealand.
It pollutes our waterways and our ecosystems. So if I
can just suggest that, you know, if people are going
to bait, which is the most viable and most successful
method of controlling rats, because like like I mentioned earlier,
rats being neophobic. Quite often people will bang a rat
(06:04):
trap or something like that into an environment and hope
they're going to catch the rats that might be circling
and to a point you may actually get something. You
might rats within a colony. Bit like humans, they have
stupid ones and they have over zealous ones. Those are
the ones that you're generally going to catch. You're never
going to catch the cunning one be too smart. So
we use their gluttony against them to actually get rid
(06:26):
of them. We use that baiting process for them to
knock them over. So yeah, there's a whole lot of
process around it. But you know, having traps, cats, all
those things I guess are all working for the same
system of trying to lower the numbers. But yeah, it's
a thing that never goes away. It's constantly here, particularly
in urban environments. Rurally, they have a similar problem around
(06:49):
their food stores and trying to manage the sort of
run of the farm in that because they have a
constant issue. But yeah, it's just something that never goes away.
We have peaks and we have troughs. But yeah, have.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You ever come across anyone I was saying before that
when I was a kid, my mum ranaissance on farm
to try and that because we're getting and absolutely infested
in the house with rats, seemed to work.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Have you It must have been a big coincidence. But
the rats are there many people out there trying the
supernatural that you see craig ah.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I think people throw a hope and the prayer up
all the time. I had a funny, funny job the
other day where I met a lady and her husband
and he was more terrified than she was of the rats,
and she had been trying to coax him to do
something about it for a month or so. So I
call it a new technique called the hand grenade, where
he bangs open the roof, hats thries a handful of
(07:46):
baits up through there, and then hopes for the best.
You know, The problem with that is you don't know
how much bait's been consumed. You don't know whether you've
got them all. And in her case, not only have
they got the tip of the iceberg. I came back
a number of times to help them with that and
get rid of everything for them. But yeah, it's interesting.
(08:06):
Everyone has different ideas. I've had customers that are so
mortified by the noises and knowing what process is going
on because the techniques we use. We use a special
baiting technique that effectively creates like a rat party upstairs,
and so when you have an issue, Yeah, well they
all come come to the bait, and there's a big
(08:27):
competition for it. So as people say that sounds like
there's a rugby game going on up there with things
flying around, Yeah, I look, I've had all sorts I've had.
I've had maggot infested rats fall on my head from
and I've opened up ruth kevity as I say. I
had a customer years ago that thought she'd seen a
(08:48):
large what she thought was a cat, but it ends
up turning into a rat which was bigger than the cat,
and he was so big I couldn't even get him
a normal conventional means. I had the custom make a
special rat box for him to come and have a
feed and get rid of them.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Wow. So yeah, that big is not going to be
taken down by your average overweight to miss ponsome cat,
is it.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
No, not at all, particularly if they're being fed up
on delicious chicken and gravy and all of the knife
lot of awful Exactly why would they'd be interested in that?
So incidentally, when when we actually got the rat and
I went out to see her, it was the glossiest,
healthiest rat I've ever seen. And I said to her,
perhaps you should get a taxidermit and make it into
(09:31):
a purse or a hat or something, you know, and
you can wear it around.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But yeah, it was a beautiful shiny rat coat. Hey, well,
thank you so much for your expertise on this, Craig.
That's really interesting to talk to you. You you want to
plug your rat business or you feel free to if
you if you want, If people you've got a number
of people can get hold of you, or whatever your
name is, people can look up on.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah, we're a family based business in Auckland. We called
PCs Pest Control and we're more than happy to help anyone,
even through a process of trying to help them understand
what's going on and maybe give them some peace of mind.
Feel free to look us up.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Love it. It sounds like you're very good at what
you do. Craig PC is pace Control well, if you
know Auckland, give them a buzz. But it sounds like
business is booming for Craig at the moment.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I like the sound of that big cat's eized rat
with the beautiful shiny coat.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
It's like a King of the Ring situation. It's just
taken out everything.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
For more from News Talk st B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk z'b follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We're talking about this rat explosion in parts of Auckland
and a suggestion from the former housewife of New Zealand
and also the founder of the Cat Foundation of New
Zealand and Batlee Burton, saying that we need more cats
on the job. So I eight hundred eighty ten eighty.
What's the rat situation like in your place? And what
are you doing about it?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
E one hundred eighty ten eighties and number to cool?
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Gooday, Craig, how's it going now?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're a pest controller and things are exploding at the moment.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Oh yeah, they're pretty busy, all right.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
So what's causing the current increase in rat activity?
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Pretty much just urban living, guys, Just the fact that
we're all crammed in a city full of food. Mess
changes an environment and sort of changes in the activity
around the rats create change a lot of the time.
Rats and neophobic, so that means that they are acutely
aware of changing their environment and the environment changes. So
(01:10):
do we Yeah, we've got three main rats in Auckland. Well,
I say, Noory Indians healand the main two rats that
are causing the problems and the Norway rats and ship rats.
So ship rats are commonly known as roof rats. They're
black and they kind of come into your house. They'll
(01:30):
sneak around under your house, up through your walk cavities
and into your roof space. They can also get great climbers,
so they can climb up bushes and trees and jump
two meters onto your rooftop and squeezing through your roofline
stuff like that. The big ones are called Norway rats.
They're like a brown rat. I've seen one of those
(01:50):
with the circumference of a rugby ball well over a
foot long. And they're also they also sneak into the
house and start chewing on things as well. And what
was the third one, ah, the Curei rats. And that's
a Pacific rat they call it. But that's usually only
common in the South Island down South and a few
(02:11):
of our so little islands speak with around.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You here, And they got missed. They get messed up
by the Norway rats and the ship rats. Right, those
little ones.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Well, to be honest, they all sort of beat each
other up, mate, and they're all they're all looking for
food sources. They're all trying to survive, and unfortunately there's
there tends to be a bit of a crossover for us.
Most people don't well probably don't want to be aware
of the fact that, you know, when you go to
bed at night and you jump into bed and kiss
your wife to sleep and petun your lights off and
(02:40):
pull your blankets up, you've got rats circling your house
every night. You know there they're moving through, they're moving
around your fence lines. They are they're looking for voids
and opportunity, just like like most most of the critics.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Are before hit when text has said before is a
rat watching you right now?
Speaker 4 (03:01):
There is? And you know what rats are quote fearless
of us too, So when they get used to us,
they they mimic our behavior a little bit. They hide
away up in our roof spaces, and when we're active,
they're quiet, and when we go to bed, that's when
they get busy. And so quite often people don't even
know they have rats until they start seeing infrastructural issues
(03:23):
in the house or potential things like they go away
over Christmas. We always get a big spike at Christmas,
because there's a change when the activity in that space changes,
So the rats pick up on that. And quite often
people come home after holiday turn on the dishwasher or
the washing machine and flood the house out because the
rats have been in there shimming all the pipes out,
(03:43):
trying to get the water and stuff like that. You know.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, I just get had a new kitchen put in,
and when we remove the old one, we found that
rats had been having a good go at the wires.
And so what are they doing? Like when they do
things like that they eat the plastic around a wire?
What are they trying to get out of that? Because
they can't go? They're getting sustenance from it, are they?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
No?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I tell you why they do it. It's because it's
a natural survival mechanism for them, so that they have
their in sizes never stopped growing and they don't chew.
But they don't chew. If they don't gnaw, then their
teeth get too long and it can actually prevent them
from being at to eat and other things. So it's
more of a survival mechanism and a kind of an
habitual habit that they have of chewing on things. So
(04:26):
I've seen them chew through sheet rock, galvanized iron. I've
seen them chew through you know, four by two six
x two boards that are you know, an inch and
a half thick. They if they want to get to somewhere,
they'll find the pathway there.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
They're pretty pretty damn you know, invasive in that sense.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And what do you reckon about the solution to rats
introducing more domestic cats? Is that a realistic option in
an Auckland sabbath?
Speaker 4 (04:56):
You know what? And de fine balance of trying to
make sure that we protect the environment, we protect the public,
and we protect ourselves. And with rat I think it's
not as simple as something like that where you're trying
to change the ecology of an environment, because unfortunately you're
going to get a lot of collateral damage, you know,
(05:18):
And that's that's the terrifying thing about it. And the
same with the baiting side of it, where you know,
I highly suggest to people if they're going to go
and have problems with rats, by all means, put some
bait stations outside domestic ones with debait inside. Don't put
empty baits throwing them under the house or into your
in your gardens and stuff like that because the actual
(05:40):
crossover or secondary poisoning is really terrible. You know, it
affects a lot of our endemic species in New Zealand.
It pollutes our waterways and our ecosystems. So if I
can just suggest that, you know, if people are going
to bait, which is the most viable and most successful
method of controlling rats, because like like I mentioned earlier,
rats being neophobic. Quite often people will bang a rat
(06:04):
trap or something like that into an environment and hope
they're going to catch the rats that might be circling
and to a point you may actually get something. You
might rats within a colony. Bit like humans, they have
stupid ones and they have over zealous ones. Those are
the ones that you're generally going to catch. You're never
going to catch the cunning one be too smart. So
we use their gluttony against them to actually get rid
(06:26):
of them. We use that baiting process for them to
knock them over. So yeah, there's a whole lot of
process around it. But you know, having traps, cats, all
those things I guess are all working for the same
system of trying to lower the numbers. But yeah, it's
a thing that never goes away. It's constantly here, particularly
in urban environments. Rurally, they have a similar problem around
(06:49):
their food stores and trying to manage the sort of
run of the farm in that because they have a
constant issue. But yeah, it's just something that never goes away.
We have peaks and we have troughs. But yeah, have.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You ever come across anyone I was saying before that
when I was a kid, my mum ranaissance on farm
to try and that because we're getting and absolutely infested
in the house with rats, seemed to work.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Have you It must have been a big coincidence. But
the rats are there many people out there trying the
supernatural that you see craig ah.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I think people throw a hope and the prayer up
all the time. I had a funny, funny job the
other day where I met a lady and her husband
and he was more terrified than she was of the rats,
and she had been trying to coax him to do
something about it for a month or so. So I
call it a new technique called the hand grenade, where
he bangs open the roof, hats thries a handful of
(07:46):
baits up through there, and then hopes for the best.
You know, The problem with that is you don't know
how much bait's been consumed. You don't know whether you've
got them all. And in her case, not only have
they got the tip of the iceberg. I came back
a number of times to help them with that and
get rid of everything for them. But yeah, it's interesting.
(08:06):
Everyone has different ideas. I've had customers that are so
mortified by the noises and knowing what process is going
on because the techniques we use. We use a special
baiting technique that effectively creates like a rat party upstairs,
and so when you have an issue, Yeah, well they
all come come to the bait, and there's a big
(08:27):
competition for it. So as people say that sounds like
there's a rugby game going on up there with things
flying around, Yeah, I look, I've had all sorts I've had.
I've had maggot infested rats fall on my head from
and I've opened up ruth kevity as I say. I
had a customer years ago that thought she'd seen a
(08:48):
large what she thought was a cat, but it ends
up turning into a rat which was bigger than the cat,
and he was so big I couldn't even get him
a normal conventional means. I had the custom make a
special rat box for him to come and have a
feed and get rid of them.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Wow. So yeah, that big is not going to be
taken down by your average overweight to miss ponsome cat,
is it.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
No, not at all, particularly if they're being fed up
on delicious chicken and gravy and all of the knife
lot of awful Exactly why would they'd be interested in that?
So incidentally, when when we actually got the rat and
I went out to see her, it was the glossiest,
healthiest rat I've ever seen. And I said to her,
perhaps you should get a taxidermit and make it into
(09:31):
a purse or a hat or something, you know, and
you can wear it around.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But yeah, it was a beautiful shiny rat coat. Hey, well,
thank you so much for your expertise on this, Craig.
That's really interesting to talk to you. You you want to
plug your rat business or you feel free to if
you if you want, If people you've got a number
of people can get hold of you, or whatever your
name is, people can look up on.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah, we're a family based business in Auckland. We called
PCs Pest Control and we're more than happy to help anyone,
even through a process of trying to help them understand
what's going on and maybe give them some peace of mind.
Feel free to look us up.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Love it. It sounds like you're very good at what
you do. Craig PC is pace Control well, if you
know Auckland, give them a buzz. But it sounds like
business is booming for Craig at the moment.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I like the sound of that big cat's eized rat
with the beautiful shiny coat.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
It's like a King of the Ring situation. It's just
taken out everything.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
For more from News Talk st B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
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