The Twin Palisades Rat Goddesses

[Malthus]

This is truly bizzare.

Remember, folks: when buying a new home, check out your new neighbours!

http://www.laweekly.com/2008-07-31/news/rathouse-of-the-palisades/1

[garbon]

I just finished reading this article. oh my god.

[jimmy olsen]

What the fuck? How the hell does something like that go on so long. I'm surprised nobody snapped and torched that house.

[Jaron]

Didn't you read the article?

The blood of Jesus is protecting the house and no earthly fire can consume it.

[Malthus]

What the fuck? How the hell does something like that go on so long. I'm surprised nobody snapped and torched that house.

Great, then you'd be living next to 10,000 suddenly homeless rats. 

[jimmy olsen]

What the fuck? How the hell does something like that go on so long. I'm surprised nobody snapped and torched that house.

Great, then you'd be living next to 10,000 suddenly homeless rats. 

One would hope the fire would kill at least a few thousand of them.

[Savonarola]

What the fuck? How the hell does something like that go on so long. I'm surprised nobody snapped and torched that house.

Great, then you'd be living next to 10,000 suddenly homeless rats. 

I had that problem when I lived near the NIMH Laboratory.   

[jimmy olsen]

So, do we know how that lawsuit turned out?

Also, I couldn't get to the youtube video through the article but I managed to find it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCT1_SDA-wA&eurl

[Malthus]

What the fuck? How the hell does something like that go on so long. I'm surprised nobody snapped and torched that house.

Great, then you'd be living next to 10,000 suddenly homeless rats. 

I had that problem when I lived near the NIMH Laboratory.   

When the rats start building their *own* house on the lot, you *really* have a problem.

[Savonarola]

When the rats start building their *own* house on the lot, you *really* have a problem.

Yes, but they qualified for a sub-prime mortgage so what can you do?   

[jimmy olsen]

This'll give you a good idea on how many rats they hauled away.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/spot-news/palisades-rathouse-rats-even-ate-the-furniture/

Palisades Rathouse: Rats even ate the furniture
Thursday, Aug. 7 2008 @ 1:05PM
By LA Weekly in Spot News

By Max Taves

"The furniture had been tunneled through." So says Gary James, whose business model for his company Atticbusters is really simple: When the piles of dead rodents following extermination by poisoning are so bad nobody wants to clean them up, he steps in.

For the last seven years, James has visited thousands of Southern California homes and offices, and seen a lot of disgusting stuff. "I've been to a lot of homes," James tells LA Weekly. "I've had to drag dead raccoons from basements that were being eaten alive by maggots."

But of all of his adventures, his trip last November to the Pacific Palisades home of Margaret and Marjorie Barthel ranks as his most memorable—and by that he means unambiguously repulsive.

Here's why:

"I have a ten-foot long cargo van," says James. By the time he got done removing hundreds upon hundreds of dead rats from the Barthel home last fall, "Two-thirds of the van was packed with [dead] rodents from top to bottom and side to side."

This van, which extends several more feet in the front, was solidly packed with dead rats from inside the Barthel home.

But it gets better, or worse. At almost every job site his company mops up, he finds most of the dead mice and rats in the basements or attics—hence his company's name.

But not on Fiske Avenue in the Palisades. "Most of the rats were inside the home—in the living space," James says. "The furniture had been tunneled through."

To the longtime cleanup man, it was obvious that the rats dominated the inside of the house, and had no fear of their human co-inhabitants—the Barthel twins.

"One of my guys—who has been with me for seven years—called me up and was like, 'Gary, this is fucking gross!' My guys were miserable."

It wasn't easy for James either. At the beginning of the job, James says he walked ten steps into the house wearing a combination of "three masks" but had to retreat immediately. The smell of decaying rats was overwhelming, he says. On top of that, there was feces throughout.

James says he told the sisters that they needed to "chlorinate" the inside of their home to quell the incredibly potent smell of urine, and he offered to do that service. But the sisters rejected the offer. Not a good idea, he says.

"As long as there's the scent of rats, the rats are going to come back."

Reach the writer at [email protected]

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like the lawsuit was settled out of court.

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-01-01/news/palisades-rathouse-case-settled-out-of-court/

[Malthus]

When the rats start building their *own* house on the lot, you *really* have a problem.

Yes, but they qualified for a sub-prime mortgage so what can you do?   

You win the thread.

[DisturbedPervert]

James says he told the sisters that they needed to "chlorinate" the inside of their home to quell the incredibly potent smell of urine, and he offered to do that service. But the sisters rejected the offer.

What?  I can see a couple old crazy ladies not wanting to kill animals, even those as gross as rats, but why wouldn't you want to get rid of the smell of rat piss?

[lustindarkness]

Thank you for giving me something to read at work, that was just crazy, I kinda wished they had not settled out of court so we could read an even longer article of all that was said there.

Fucked up in so many ways.

BTW, did you read the comments, one is a council woman giving her point of view on the meeting and some comments from close by neighbors too.