While the Paris Olympics is set to be a festival of socialising and intermingling, city authorities are keen for visitors not to encounter any of the capital’s notorious furry inhabitants. Humourously portrayed in the hit animated film “Ratatouille”, the French capital’s abundant rat population is no joke for the city’s residents — and could be an embarrassment as the Olympics spotlight falls on Paris. “All of the Olympic sites and celebration areas were analysed (for rats) before the Games,” deputy mayor Anne-Claire Boux, who has responsibility for public health, told AFP in an interview.
As well as ordering a deep clean to remove any food residues that might tempt the scurriers from their underground lairs, the mayor’s rodent specialists also worked to close up exit points from the sewers around the sites. “Where there were areas with lots of rats we put traps in place ahead of the Games,” Boux continued, adding that both mechanical rat-traps and chemical solutions were used to reduce troublesome populations. The park behind the Eiffel Tower, where the beach volleyball is set to take place, and the Louvre gardens, where the Olympic cauldron is set to burn, are popular picnic spots — and previously rat infested.
“Ultimately, no-one should aim to exterminate Paris’s rats, and they’re useful in maintaining the sewers,” she added. “The point is that they should stay in the sewers.” Spruced up Paris vermin, a feature in French literature from .