Rats and Feces and Stench. OH MY!

This South Nashville home is no Oz but if it was, this yellow brick road would be stained with rat carcasses.

The constant barking would break the Tin Man’s heart.

The brainless Scare Crow would scratch his straw head and wonder; “Where are all the rats coming from and why can nobody stop it?”

The cowardly Lion would take one deep breath and run away from the over powering stench.

The problem?

A bunch of angry snarling Toto’s pooping up a river of stink.

Janice O’Neal is no Dorothy. She’s a grandma who is pissed!

“Anyone who comes back here and says they don’t smell it is a bare faced liar.”

O’Neal is furious. She is a human pit bull who is tired of living in a cage of stink.

She leads Al and me to the rear corner of her Hewlett Street home.

Like a wet blanket of noxious odor, the smell sticks to our skin, filling our nostrils, making our eyes water.

“We can’t let kids in the back yard play. We can’t sit out and grill. The smell is so bad. It will make you puke!”

O’Neal waves her hands in front of her face. She turns her head away from the rear fence. She seems weak as if the nauseating smell is reaching through her nostrils and sucking the energy from her.

She lowers her head pulling her shirt up over her mouth and nose. Like a sickened hunch back the angry little woman moves away from the rear fence line.

“It stinks. Whatever it is it stinks. It is god awful. It is all the time!!!”

Other family members chime in like an angry chorus.

They hate the stink, but that’s just the start of it on Hewlett Street.

Rats and feces and stench. OH MY.

Like the tip of the spear, I go to the yard where the odor is emanating from. The yard is dark because of the thick layer of tress over head. The smell of feces is pungent in the air. As I walk forward I imagine this is what Bubonic Plague smells like.

Behind the home there are pens and dog houses and six Beagles. There are feces in the cage and dog food scattered about.

But quite honestly, the pens and the backyard don’t look that dirty to me.

The smell is another story. It is encompassing, like mustard gas. It is pervasive and prevalent and pernicious. It seems to blister the epidermal layer of all who dare encroach on this invisible denizen’s lair.

I see a number of rats laying dead. There’s one in the weeds. There is a dead rat on its back near a shed; its white belly is exposed. I can see the rodent’s little rat fangs sticking through his little rat lips.

Jennifer Ladd lives at this address. The young woman who answers the door is friendly and eager to answer questions about the smell, the dogs and the problem that some say begins in her backyard.

Ladd comes to the door with her two-year-old son Michael. The toddler is wearing a diaper which is appropriate for the questions I ask her about the feces and stench.

“Actually it is the house behind us,” she says. “My dad keeps the dogs clean.”

Ladd tells me that the smell disgusts her. She says, like the O’Neal family next door, that she is also afraid to put her baby down in the backyard because of the rat infestation.

“They carry diseases. They can get a hold of this one,” she said as she snuggles baby boy Michael closer to her bosom. “I have not been able to let him go in the backyard.”

“So what I have here is a neighborhood where nobody can let their kids play in their own backyard because there are so much feces and rats. Is that messed up?”

“That is messed up!” she parrots.

Ladd tells me that Metro Health has been here and put down rat poison. That would explain the dead rats in her backyard.

But who is to blame? I wonder. What so many rats? Why so much stink? Where is the clean up?

Rats and Feces and Stench, OH MY!

Ladd tells me that the people behind her on the next street over are the problem. She alleges they wash their dog feces down the hill in an unsanitary river of fecal matter. She says that is the source of the smell.

Al and I go to this home on Norma Drive.

We go into the back yard and find a dog pen. The sign is to the point: “BEWARE OF DOG.”

A black and white pit bull mix rushes the fence banging his anvil sized head into the mesh. He is angry and possessed and wants to grab Al’s scotum and chew it off for a souvenir.

We will later learn this dog’s name is Little Man. There is nothing little about the aggressive behavior the dog exhibits.

Even the owner tells Metro Animal Control officer Billy Biggs, “Be careful, Little Man will bite!”

That’s like, Quint, the grizzled salty fishing boat captain in Jaws, telling Roy Schieder that shark has a taste for human torso.

At Messed Up’s request, Biggs bangs on the door at Norma Street.

Biggs walks to the pen and inhales deeply.

“I don’t smell nothing,” he says to co-worker Terry Jones.

Both Jones and Biggs move closer to the fence which is about four-and-a-half feet high.

“The pen looks clean,” Biggs says softly, trying not to disturb little man. “I don’t think the rats are coming from here.”

Jones points to the Ladd house in the background indicating the source is there. He steps closer to the fence.

Bad move.

Little Man explodes from his hiding place and throws his angry dog body against the chain link barrier.

Jones, a veteran animal control officer, is startled as the dog comes very close to snapping off his head.

“I got to go get me my pole,” Jones says taking five steps backward.

Biggs bangs on the door of the home.

A young woman holding a small baby answers the door.

Biggs tells the woman who identifies herself as Cynthia King that he is investigating the stench and the rats.

Cynthis King, Like Ms. Ladd tells me that her dogs are clean.

Biggs tells me that the dogs are licensed and up to date on shots. He says the sanitation division inside the Metro Health Department is responsible for the other health issues.

Before Biggs leaves he tells Mrs. King that the neighbor behind her with the six Beagles is probably the source of the problem.

King says she is not surprised.

“Their yard and their dogs they are nasty back there and that is where the rats come from,” King tells me clutching her small child.

Just then, fellow Health Department worker Jawon Lauderdale arrives. His ID card indicates he is with Metro Sanitation division.

Lauderdale knows this area.

“We got the complaint on Monday,” he tells me. “With the volume and the amount of animals there, you have to expect that there will be some sort of smell. There is going to be a smell. So we asked the owner to maintain the pens, attend to the pens, if possible, twice a day. If the problem persists, what we do is send out a notice that there is a problem. And they should take proper steps to keep the property clean, to clean behind the dogs, feces, put out straw or hay to absorb the problem.”

So Metro has checked the dogs. Metro has put out rat poison. Metro is trying to deal with the source of the stink.

None of this is good enough for Janice O’Neal who talks to me angrily behind the protective face shield of her shirt.

“Come out here and do your job,” she screams at the camera, pretending it is the head of the Metro Health Department. “Get rid of the odors and get rid of the rats. Get rid of the problem, everything that causes it. The source of the stink.”

She is angry and her words are coming at me in disjointed bursts. “I invite every official to come and sit in my backyard and eat lunch if you can.”

I inhale deeply and feel the caustic burning stench fill my lungs. “It smells like a toilet back here. I don’t think I want to.”

She laughs her first laugh of the day. “It is worse than a toilet.”

That afternoon I get on a conference call with Metro Health Department officials.

They confirm there is a problem and they are treating the area for rats.

“Whenever people have outside animals and feed them outside there is a rat problem,” Brent Hagar, Director of Environmental Health Services tells me over the phone. “We have issued the occupant with the Beagles a 10 day notice for sanitation issues,” he adds. “There is no requirement in Nashville that says how many dogs you can have and she has six beagles. They were checked. They are all vaccinated. They seem to be in good health. But there is a sanitation problem with the waste. They were issued a citation Tuesday and we were out there on Monday we asp went out and treated for rats that day. We found rat holes. We put rat poison in the holes.”

Hagar says the rats come because dog food is scattered everywhere. Hagar says the smell comes from the feces which are not cleaned up appropriately.

“Rats = disease,” Hagar says. “There are a number of health issues. They can carry plague. They can contaminate food products. They can bite. They can destroy property.”

Monday, May 12, 2008, Hagar calls me back. He tells me that his people have been swarming this neighborhood looking to rectify this horrible problem. The director tells me that they have treated again for rats and will continue to do so till the rat infestation is eliminated.

He also tells me that in addition to the woman with the Beagles, the Health Department just recently cited the dog owners on Norma Street. Hagar says the family there has allegedly been burying the animal waste in the backyard, which is not permissible. Hagar says the family now has ten days to fix this problem or they too will be cited into court.

Hagar tells me that the health department is on this problem and will get it fixed.

For the residents in this stinky, rat infested neighborhood, one can only hope that Hagar’s Ruby slippers click together and solve everyone’s problems.

Until then I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Janice O’Neal.

May 12th, 2008 Posted by Heather | Uncategorized | 17 comments