Cardiff exterminator says number of rat call outs in the city has increased by ... trends now
A Cardiff pest exterminator says the number of rat call outs in the city has increased by a staggering 80 per cent in just one year.
Gareth Davies, who has been catching rats for 34 years, says the vermin are getting bolder, chewing through pipes and concrete and burrowing into homes.
The problem is getting so bad, the 52-year-old is not sure he has enough poison to kill them all off.
Each week, Mr Davies attends call-outs at flats, office blocks and students houses and sends the rats he catches to a central incinerator but he can't tackle the problem fast enough.
And its not just rats that are plaguing the Welsh capital, the pest controller is now worried about bed bugs and is expecting one of the worst summers on record after a 65 per cent increase in calls since July.
Gareth Davies, who has been catching pests for 34 years, holds up one of the dead rats he has found while on a call out in the Welsh capital
One of the rats Mr Davies has caught while out on a job in Cardiff
The 52-year-old uses air rifles and pistols as well as poison and traditional trap to catch the vermin which he says are burrowing under Cardiff
Mr Davies, a veteran with the Royal Air Force uses poison, air rifles and traditional traps to tackle the infestation of rats across Cardiff.
But he says that homeowners need to work with him to eradicate the swarms of vermin and that poison alone is no longer enough to kill them off.
The 52-year-old regularly puts out rodenticide poison Selontra in little black boxes he calls external bait points.
'It hits them like a juggernaut,' he said.
But Mr Davies also says that the cost of living crisis has pushed more people towards trying to solve the problem themselves instead of calling out professionals and it's not effective.
He said: 'The problem is they're not putting enough bait down for the sheer amount of rats that are here.
'What that means is you get hundreds of rats squabbling over food and it's not enough poison to kill them.
'You're just feeding them and one or two of them might feel a bit ropey but generally they're having a great time.'
One of his clients did not believe they had a rat problem until Mr Davies showed them footage from a hidden pest camera in their attic
One of Mr Davies's clients had their downstairs toilet pipe chewed through and rats burrowed into the house - the pest controller says that rats can even chew
