‘Hundreds’ of rats have taken over this Dartmouth parking lot. Now they’re damaging vehicles

Jamie Cleveland started his Ford Escape like he did every morning outside his Dartmouth, N.S., apartment building.

But on this day a warning light flashed on the dashboard of his SUV. 

He dismissed the alert, which indicated a coolant issue, and decided to begin his commute to work anyway. However, within minutes, more warning lights appeared.

Then the engine began to shake.

Cleveland pulled over and popped the hood. He said from what he saw, the problem could be only one thing: rats.

“You could see they chewed off all the wires. They were bare and there was a lot of feces all over my engine,” he said.

Cleveland has had to get his vehicle towed to a mechanic three separate times over the last year due to damage caused by rats. Each time it cost him $1,000.

Several residents in Dartmouth’s Highfield Park neighbourhood say their vehicles have been damaged by rats chewing the wires. Some say despite their complaints, nothing is being done about the pest problem and it’s getting worse.

There are “hundreds” of rats living in Cleveland’s parking lot alone and they’re getting more and more brazen, he said. 

“It's outrageous,” he said. “You can come here in the nighttime and they're just like, ‘party time!’ Like, they're all over the place.”

CBC News visited several parking lots in the neighbourhood one evening and, using infrared night vision binoculars, saw dozens of rats scurrying about.

Cleveland and other residents say they’ve started parking on the street to avoid damage to their vehicles.

“It's the talk of the building,” he said. “I know of about seven or eight people here that actually had [their vehicles damaged].”

The building Cleveland lives in is one of dozens of apartment complexes in the neighbourhood and residents in other buildings are experiencing the same issues.