Pave: Vacation Postcards: Aurouze, deratisateur

Le jour 366 de Sarko

In the animated Disney movie Ratatouille the boss rat, Django, takes his son Rémy to see the sights of Paris. Actually one sight, the shopfront of a deratisateur. Rats hang in the window, their necks snapped in steel traps. It's rather a grim father-son moment.

[Photo source: Alastair Miller/Bloomberg;
Rémy is a Disney copyrighted creation and French citizen]

Imagine our surprise to discover that the shopfront was not some fanciful story device of Brad Bird. It is the very real Aurouze Sanitation, located at 8 rue des Halles in the swanky 1er arrondissement (municipal) of Paris, where it has fought a rearguard action against rats, pigeons, and other animaux nuisibles since 1872.

[Photo source: Alastair Miller/Bloomberg;
Rémy is a Disney copyrighted creation and French citizen]

Aurouze has been killing rats for 135 years. In its window hang 21 dead rats, their necks crushed by steel traps. They've been there since 1925.

... While traps make for a more impressive window display, most rats these days are dispatched with anti-coagulants that cause them to die from internal bleeding, says Aurouze. Old-fashioned rat traps are fine for people's houses, not for major urban infestations, [Cecile Aurouze, co-proprietor and granddaughter of the founder] says.

By law, every basement in Paris must have rat poison sprinkled about. Some of Paris's best-known restaurants and food stores are important customers, Aurouze says, but "they would die from shame and be very angry if I gave out their names."

The shop is on a busy commercial street leading to the Les Halles shopping center, the former site of Paris's wholesale food market. Rat infestation was one of several reasons the market was moved out to the suburbs in 1971.

... There's no reliable estimate for the number of rats in Paris and getting rid of them all would be impossible, says Michel Pascal, a Rennes, Brittany-based researcher at the National Institute of Agronomic Research, who has led campaigns to eliminate rats on islands in the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

[Hat tip: Hervé]

As you see, we have made fun postcards for writing your friends at PETA after taking in this sight.

[Photo source: Alastair Miller/Bloomberg;
Rémy is a Disney copyrighted creation and French citizen]

PFFT (What is this?): Nature morte de Paris 5 | Bizarre enough for Hollywood 3 | Rayonnement français 1½