Why Alberta doesn’t have rats

This piece was featured in Issue 24 of Works in Progress. Subscribe today to get Issue 26, and an issue every two months after, delivered straight to your home or workplace.Most of us accept rats as a fact of life. They live in tunnels and sewers, gnaw through walls, contaminate food, and resist nearly every attempt to push them back. A 2023 estimate put New York City’s rat population at about three million animals, roughly one rat for every three human residents. Almost nowhere do authorities t...