“Community garden rats! 311 can’t treat, what to do?”

“Dear PoPville,

I live in a building that backs into an alley with a community garden with a MAJOR rat problem. The garden has a big compost container and also has a large shed where they store gardening equipment. The area under the shed seems to serve as a very hospitable rat burrow, as just walking by it at night I’ll see several rats scurrying from residential trash cans back under it. The compost also seems to attract the rats, as I’ve seen them trying to get in and out of it, especially in the winter when it’s a source of heat.

I tried contacting 311 about the rodent problem,

but because the garden is enclosed by a fence and kept locked when garden workers aren’t there, they couldn’t access the area to put rat traps underground. They said they had to close out the request and couldn’t do anything about it.

I’ve tried contacting the garden’s main email to ask if they could help mitigate the rat problem, but never got a response, and their social media accounts haven’t been active in a long time.

Are there any options for trying to get the rat situation under control? Just walking along the alley at night I’ll see at least a half dozen rats cross my path, so can’t imagine how many more exist (also there’s pretty much always a couple dead and decomposing rats in the alley at any given time).”