Two households across the street from San Pedro High School are infested with rats, and their residents say they came from construction at SPHS.
Shannon Black said she has only seen one mouse in the 20 years she has lived in the house across the street from campus. But from the end of September 2021 to December 2021, she caught and killed nearly three dozen rats.
“It’s gotten to the point where they breed faster than you can keep up with them,” Black said. “They’re not going for any more of the traps.”
Black said that the school cut down lots of large trees during construction. The school is currently working on a $178 million comprehensive modernization project. The rats lived in these trees, and went into the surrounding neighborhood after they were gone.
In May 2021, Los Angeles Unified School District representatives said the construction project would remove 112 trees on the campus, but replace them with 148 new trees.
“When they cut those trees down, that’s when the problem started,” Black said. “Then about three weeks after that, they did demolition and tore down the school.”
Black contacted LAUSD, and shared several pictures, including her destroyed stove, couch and heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC.
“They have nests on my HVAC and under my HVAC,” Black said. “They’ve chewed through the wires, the ducting’s been fixed twice and they just keep ripping it.”
Black said LAUSD representatives told her they set traps at the school, but did not catch anything.
“I’m like, set them across the street at the houses,” Black said. “Why are you setting the traps at school? …. There’s nothing left.”
Black said that major construction like this makes rodents move.
“She’s trying to blow it off like they’re not responsible,” Black said.
Black rents the house, and the owner had grown tired of waiting for the school district to act, so she called pest control to the house.
“Pest control says they have tunnels underground,” Black said. “That’s how they’re getting in. And they’re going to fill the ground with poison, and it’s going to take over three months. [The owner] said if the school district doesn’t step up, she’s going to sue.”
Black has tried putting covers on vents, and sealing holes with foam, but has had little success.
“They decided they wanted to dig a hole on the side of the house to get up underneath the house,” Black said. “So, I filled that with sand. Well, they dug the sand out. So, then I filled it with concrete.”
Black said that pest control told her the only way to stop this is to drill holes around her house and put poison inside the ground — which will take months.
“Every day I get up, every night I come home, I have to sweep up the turds,” Black said.
She can no longer use her stove, as the rats have been climbing into the insulation.
“I turned on my oven the other day and it smelled like I was baking urine,” Black said.
Homeowner Annette Mcdonald Trani said that she has had a problem with rats since October 2021. She will need to have her house tented to exterminate them.
“Thank God my husband’s retired and has some money,” Mcdonald Trani said. “But we’re going to have to put that on a credit card.”
Mcdonald Trani has seen the rats in her home, both dead and alive.
“I’ve seen droppings,” Mcdonald Trani said. “And I’m ready to crawl out of my skin.”
The reason Mcdonald Trani does not have an infestation as bad as Black’s is because of her cat and dogs, which chase them. Black has one dog.
“My cat got sick from eating a rat,” Mcdonald Trani said. “My two dogs had eye infections because of it. They’re dirty, they carry a lot of diseases.”
Her pets are not able to keep up with the amount of rodents.
“We’re not talking about five rodents,” Mcdonald Trani said. “We’re talking about 20, 30, 40 rats living underneath our house. How’s he going to catch 20, 40 rats?”
Black is unsure if the rodents have caused her any health problems, but she has made an appointment with her doctor. She has HIV, late stage 3 renal failure and a heart condition.
“I do have health issues,” Black said. “And they do know that.”
Black said the rats are driving her crazy, and that she can’t keep doing this.
“How many am I supposed to kill before they get involved?” Black said.
Representatives from LAUSD did not respond in time to comment on this story.