Let’s face it, though we may not want to admit it: 2020 was the year of the rat in most city neighborhoods and, regrettably, that includes the west of Washington Street.

It’s the first time that I can recall in two decades of recollections that rats were a problem in this neighborhood. And if 2020 brought them into the neighborhood, then 2021 was the year they built a two-room addition and put dormers in the attic for their growing families.

It’s a blow to the community ego to suddenly have a rat problem, but as it was explained to me by a city inspector, last year saw many restaurants around the city close down or hibernate, and that led to rearranged rodents ranging farther to find their feasts. Here on the west side of Washington, we have our share of things to wish we didn’t have, but I could always tell my friends in the South End or on Dorchester Avenue, who might have looked down their noses a bit at our area, that “at least we don’t have any rats like you do.”

It was in the midst of one of those conversations recently that an old-timer friend of mine suggested skunks as a solution.

Okay, maybe I keep different company than a lot of people who might be reading this, but there’s a long-standing myth that just won’t die suggesting that in the 1940s and 1950s, the City of Boston released boatloads of skunks into its neighborhoods to control a growing rodent population. If I haven’t heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times from people I know – mostly long-time Bostonians who’ve passed this on for decades.

At first, I thought this was plausible. Skunks are known to occasionally eat rats, and there are a lot of skunks in Dorchester. So maybe today’s skunks come from a lineage of a rat eaters that rid our streets and backyards of rodent infestations 60 and 70 years ago.

Not so, said my friend Marion Larson of the state’s Division of Wildlife, who said it was an interesting piece of urban folklore, but not true.

“I talked with someone who worked for our agency in the 1950s, and he was much amused,” she said.

In fact, skunks don’t eat rats and they waddle around urban homes for precisely the same reason that rats do – our trash storage and management habits need some work, she said.

“It’s not a glamorous topic, but it needs to be addressed in a systemic manner which involves businesses - particularly food-related operations - and residential inhabitants,” said Larson. “Unfortunately, there are those who are using rat poison, which can be ingested by other wildlife and unsupervised pets and it either kills the animal outright, or another animal eats the poisoned animal or feeds it to young wildlife who can sicken and die.”

Skunks are just part of the landscape and probably always have been, she said. However, she mused,

hawks and other raptor birds do eat rats, and if they are suddenly present in your neighborhood, then you’ve probably gotten an explosion of rats.

“Contrary to popular belief, predators don’t control prey populations; it’s actually the reverse,” she said.

And to think I thought all those peregrine falcons had suddenly arrived here just for the view of the harbor.

KEEPIN’ THE CHANGE
Some folks in the neighborhood have been bringing up the fact that the new owner of one of the corner stores (which will remain unidentified) has allegedly been keeping the pennies when giving back change.

So, for instance, when you buy a $1.92 Spicy Slim Jim, or those odd Ketchup flavored potato chips, with a couple of dollar bills, the clerks are giving you back a nickel instead of eight cents. It’s such an old school move, but one that quickly makes me, and a lot of other neighbors, a stranger so far as that store is concerned
Not many people notice, but storekeepers know that over days, months, and years, this it adds up to a tidy sum. Four cents here, three cents there, eight cents now and then, and you can have thousands in no time depending on the volume of your sales.

If I were them, I’d stop keeping the change. It’s not as if they’re giving a price break either; I paid nearly $3 for a can of Carnation milk not long ago.

GET A FIRE EXTINGUISHER
It’s just a year ago that we had a bit of a fire in our home, and I’m going to frame this tidbit as a public service announcement for everyone to get a fire extinguisher for the kitchen. Last October, a member of the family had some hot oil on the stove that went from worrisome to near disaster in a matter of seconds. As the flames grew hotter and sprung higher into the air, I could find nothing with which to cover the pan or stop the flames. My immediate reaction – which every fire official in eastern Massachusetts since then has told me was incorrect – was to get the pan out of the house and throw it into the street. On the way out the door, though, it exploded in a ball of fire.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that the house wasn’t set ablaze, but in the course of it all, I suffered third-degree burns, which are pretty serious. I can still recall lying in the hospital bed about this time last year, watching the baseball playoffs while wondering if I was going to be able to keep my mobility. In another miracle of miracles, I healed up rather fine, and rather quickly, and have had no long-term affects at all.

I’ve been told that I should have thrown baking powder on the fire, or that I should have put a cast-iron skillet slowly over the top of the pan. Needless to say, I encourage everyone to get a fire extinguisher for the kitchen, keep it up to date and learn how to use it.

Fires in the home aren’t incremental over time; they’re an underestimated fast fuse.

WOW PARK

Finally, the City has assigned a project manager to the effort to make a new public park on Norwell Street in the West of Washington (WOW) neighborhood. Now, there really isn’t a park anywhere in WOW; it’s one of the few neighborhoods without one. That’s about to change, and the first step comes on Oct. 30 when Parks and Recreation hosts an in-person meeting on the future site (271 Norwell St.). The meeting will be all about what neighbors want to see there, and WOW has some fun Halloween activities planned. The meeting starts at 11 a.m. – probably ought to be there for this one.