Last fall, thankfully I didn't have a rat problem as other people did in a lot of places, but the mice were insane. I think between September and November, we killed something like 40+ mice in our garage. To the point where I wasn't sure if I should be mad about it, or sad about it. I don't like killing anything, but I also have to live in my house.

In other places, rats are just as bad, maybe even worse. People have been complaining about them destroying their gardens and wreaking any manner of havoc upon their property. In Old Town, it's gotten so bad that they've had to come up with some pretty drastic, if not high-tech solutions to the problem.

Portland has been facing some of the same issues, and I'm not sure if Old Town took some of their ideas or vice versa, but the methods being used sound a bit scary. Well, scary if you're a rat. For instance, they have guillotine-type devices in the sewer that, um well, take care of the rats. Then their bodies are washed away down the sewer.

According to the BDN, they're also using a scary box that lures them in with a delicious scent, zaps them with an electric shock, and then a mini elevator lifts them into a special collection box that pest control folks come and deal with later. It's pretty crazy on an engineering level, but hey... whatever does the job.

The first mouse traps were probably patented a couple of hundred years ago and have never really been improved upon. Are these better ways of dealing with it? Hard to say, but I bet they spend most of their time collecting bodies than setting traps. The residents of Old Town must be thrilled to see the plan in motion.