Despite federal public health officials' warnings of "unusual or aggressive behavior" by starved rodents in cities shut down by the coronavirus, exterminators say Little Rock-area rats and mice have kept their usual routines.

The lack of a stay-at-home order likely helped the state's whiskered, string-tailed residents, according to pest professionals and experts.

Ongoing business activity kept rats in apple cores, chicken bones and ketchup packets, said Richard Sims, a pest control manager for Curry's Termite, Pest and Animal Control.

Some cities that did close a little bit more "had more of a larger [rodent] presence felt, just because of the absence of the food," he said. "[But] I am not observing anything here in Central Arkansas."

Jim Fredericks, chief entomologist with the National Pest Management Association, agreed. "Many of the rats in these metro areas are under food stress right now, and part of that is due to the shelter-in-place restrictions and the quarantine restrictions," he said.

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In May, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website urged health regulators to watch for upticks in rodent activity, drawing comparisons with behavioral changes seen after natural disasters. Industry webinars emphasized the same issue, Sims said.

But thus far, the Arkansas Department of Health hasn't received reports of newly mobilized vermin, said that agency's public health veterinarian, Dr. Laura Rothfeldt.

She surmised that could be because of grass and fields in close proximity to the capital city, as well as fewer business interruptions amid the outbreak.

"We don't have that big concrete jungle. They have options," she said of rats, mice and other rodents. "We do have concerns about it, of course, if that were to happen, because they are vectors of certain diseases."

In Arkansas, environmental health officials look into rodent complaints to monitor for leptospirosis and salmonella, bacterial infections that spread via animal urine and feces. Tularemia, another infection, comes from the rodents' ticks and fleas.

The illness most popularly associated with rats -- plague -- hasn't been seen in Arkansas since at least 1970, according to CDC data. (Research published in the journal PNAS in 2018 also questions a connection between rats and the Black Death pandemic, which killed millions of people but actually may have spread through body lice and human fleas, scientists wrote.)

Broadly, it isn't as if Central Arkansas lacks for rodents, exterminators say. Since January, Sims said, he has had more than 80 commercial calls to attend to house mice, roof rats and Norway rats, often in the downtown area where sewers and structures are older and to their liking.

"The Heights is probably one of the most expensive real estate [locations] in Little Rock, but it has almost as much rodent activity as downtown, just because it's an older neighborhood," he said. Plentiful bird feeders in that area don't help.

Though he's seen few changes in rodent activity levels this spring, recent heavy rains are the sort of weather that leads to more rat, mouse and ant calls, said John Clark, an owner of Clark Exterminating in North Little Rock.

Sightings also surge in the fall, in his experience. When the weather turns, rodents scout places to nest, squeaking through air-conditioning units, holes in gas lines or dryer vents -- "anything the size of a dime," he said.

NO 'APOCALYPSE'

Nationally, the CDC's rat alert sparked a rash of lurid headlines, including reports of possible cannibalism among rats in New York City. But experts said most people shouldn't worry -- much -- about four-footed intruders.

"What we aren't going to see are hordes of angry rats leaving the downtown area," Fredericks said.

People should work to control any infestations as they usually would, he said, in part because mice are thought to contribute to allergies and, via chewing of electrical cords, to house fires.

Hendrix College biology professor Maureen McClung, whose research studies how human activity affects animal behavior, said she found the CDC's choice of words "kind of vague," adding that people shouldn't feel anxious about "aggressive" rodents.

"I would not imagine by this term that folks have thrown around -- 'aggression' -- that we should expect rats to be attacking us in our beds at night," she said. "This isn't the rat apocalypse."

Rats and mice are shy by nature and most active at night, so unusual behavior could mean being out during the day or being more bold, she said. More signs of their activity -- droppings, nests, a growing urine smell -- also can suggest strain as they fan out in search of food.

While rodent stress or, in the worst case, population collapse might sound tolerable, even agreeable, to some, McClung said it would cause problems for owls, hawks and larger mammals, all of which eat rats and mice.

For that reason, she suggests avoiding the use of rat poison and glue-style traps, so as not to inadvertently hurt backyard birds and other animals. Many people enjoy and want to support that wildlife, she said, even if they're not too concerned about rodents.

"No one's got their binoculars out to look at the rats," she said.

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Aggressive rodents not issue in LR, experts say - Arkansas Online