Which Baltimore neighborhoods are especially popular with rodents? It's not an easy question for residents to answer unless they've lived far and wide, but 200 took a stab in a survey for a pest-control company.

Almost half -- 46 percent -- named downtown when asked by d-CON about the "rattiest" neighborhoods, the company said Thursday. Other popular choices: Fells Point, the Inner Harbor and Canton.

Perhaps it's the waterfront. Of course, these are all popular neighborhoods for people, too, so a survey is bound to get a fair number of residents from those areas.

d-CON surveyed residents of four other cities as well, 1,000 people in total, zeroing in on Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Houston and Charlotte. (The company named most of those cities as high-risk areas for rats in reports from 2007 and 2009.)

The National Center for Healthy Housing said in a separate 2009 report that nearly one-third of Baltimore homes had mouse problems -- more than any of the other central cities the Columbia group studied. Eek.

So: Have rats and/or mice made appearances in your neighborhood, and is the problem getting better or worse?

Posted by Jamie Smith Hopkins at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Yuck