PARIS: Whereas the Paris Olympics is about to be a pageant of socialising and intermingling, metropolis authorities are eager for guests to not encounter any of the capital’s infamous furry inhabitants.
Humorously portrayed within the hit animated movie “Ratatouille”, the French capital’s ample rat inhabitants is not any joke for town’s residents – and may very well be a humiliation because the Olympics highlight falls on Paris.
“All the Olympic websites and celebration areas had been analysed (for rats) earlier than the Video games,” deputy mayor Anne-Claire Boux, who has accountability for public well being, informed AFP in an interview.
In addition to ordering a deep clear to take away any meals residues that may tempt the scurriers from their underground lairs, the mayor’s rodent specialists additionally labored to shut up exit factors from the sewers across the websites.
“The place there have been areas with numerous rats we put traps in place forward of the Video games,” Boux continued, including that each mechanical rat traps and chemical options had been used to scale back troublesome populations.
The park behind the Eiffel Tower, the place the seaside volleyball video games are set to happen, and the Louvre gardens, the place the Olympic cauldron is about to burn, are common picnic spots – and beforehand rat-infested.
“Finally, nobody ought to purpose to exterminate Paris’s rats, they usually’re helpful in sustaining the sewers,” she added. “The purpose is that they need to keep within the sewers.”
