A home infested with rats is frustrating residents of a neighborhood in Irvine.
The home, located on Typee Way, has been drawing complaints from neighbors who have noticed a recent uptick in rat sightings. According to both the neighbors and local officials, the three residents have not been home for some time due to being hospitalized.
That said, people living nearby are now noticing rats running around their properties, and they feel there is a bigger issue at hand.
“We see them everywhere,” said one resident, Amanda Peng. “When I’m walking the dog…even when you walk around the corner there’s a really bad smell.”
“We can’t park our cars in our driveways because we found them living in the hoods of our cars,” she elaborated. “They are hiding in our cars – there’s feces, there’s urine…at this point, we are trying to seek additional help.”
Peng told KTLA Orange County Bureau Chief Chip Yost that she and other neighbors have started a group chat to discuss potential solutions to the problem. One of those neighbors said she spoke with the family, who says they are “distraught and sorry” about what’s going on.
“It’s just an unfortunate issue financially and emotionally for them,” the neighbor explained. “They have given permission for this to get solved as quickly as possible.”
That neighbor got permission from the family to bring an exterminator inside the home, and he provided KTLA with footage that showed the interior was a complete mess, with garbage and debris all over the floor and dishes stacked in the kitchen sink. The rats running through the house — one of them was even seen drinking out of the faucet — also seemed to not care that a human was within inches of them filming.
The exterminator, David Schuelke of Twin Home Experts, stated that the rats appear to him to be domesticated, as they seem to have been in the home for some time. Someone may have been feeding them, he said.
Schuelke added that there are likely “hundreds” of rats inside the home.
“I walked into that home, and it’s probably going to be one of the worst rat infestations we are going to be taking on,” he said. “These types of infestations only come across our type of work about every five years, and this is definitely one of them.
A representative of the city of Irvine told KTLA that they too have been working with the homeowners to fix the situation, and that they have started a process where the city can go into the home with the residents’ permission without having to wait for legal processes to be completed.