The Exterminator

Alberta has been the world's largest rat-free jurisdiction since 1950. It's Karen Wickerson's job to keep it that way.

- Christina Frangou

ON EASTER SUNDAY in 2023, Karen Wickerson was at home in Airdrie, Alta., when an email arrived in her inbox.

The sender got right to the point: There was a rat in her backyard. As evidence, she attached a photo of a large black roof rat eating out of a bird feeder.

Wickerson pulled on her work boots and her Government of Alberta jacket and drove 25 minutes to meet the woman who sent the email. The woman didn't want rodenticide used in her backyard, so Wickerson set up two traps big enough to catch a rat and filled them with a stinky, non-poisonous bait. Then, some time over the next 48 hours-snap! Alberta's Rat Lady got him.

"That was kind of a feather in my cap because I actually trapped a live one," says Wickerson. The rat later died in the trap, as planned.

Wickerson's official title is rat and pest specialist, but in Alberta, she often gets called The Rat Lady. Her role is unlike anyone else's on the planet: She is responsible for keeping rats out of the province, the largest jurisdiction in the world to call itself rat-free.

"It's not everyone's cup of tea," says Wickerson of her job.

Since 1950, when rats established themselves next door in both Saskatchewan and British Columbia, Alberta has run a program to stop the rodents from setting up residency within its borders.

Its rat specialists monitor a 600-kilometre stretch at the Saskatchewan border known as the Rat Control Zone. (Rats have a harder time getting across mountains, so Alberta's western border has historically been left largely unguarded; Montana, to the south, is considered too sparsely populated to attract many large rodents.) The team also organizes public information campaigns, educating Albertans on what rats look like and asking them to be on alert for the invaders.