REGINA (CP) -- After nearly 50 years of being a rodent refuge next door to rat-free Alberta, Saskatchewan is considering a ban on allowing people to breed the destructive varmints as pets or as food for reptiles.

The province's current Pest Control Act defines rats as pests, but doesn't really do anything to prevent people from owning them, said Scott Hartley, a pest management specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture.

"The act was written for rats generally in fields," Hartley said. "I'm sure, at the time, pet rats weren't really considered.

"At some point here, we will get our turn to revise the act and maybe, or maybe not, that will be part of it. Some clarification probably needs to be made there."

Rats are not native to the Prairies, but have been around since the Second World War.

The reasoning behind banning rats as pets in Saskatchewan is that it will cut off one of the ways they are introduced into the environment.

Cameron Wilk, the province's pesticide specialist, said rats have been a problem on as many as one in four Saskatchewan farms.

Alberta already has a ban on owning rats and has long laid claim to being the only rat-free province in the country -- at least until September when a minor infestation emerged in a Calgary neighbourhood.

Citizens, with shovels in hand, banded together with city officials to kill as many as 40 rats. It's believed they were kept illegally by someone, either as snake food or as pets.

Alberta spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on what has come to be named the rat patrol.

With the help of several trap-laying inspectors, the patrol covers a rat control zone 600 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide along the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary.

Their mission, according to the Alberta Agriculture website, is "a systematic detection and eradication" of the rodents to keep infestations to a minimum.

"That is the eastern front of our rat control . . . it's extremely important," said John Borne, head of Alberta's rat control team.

"That's the major route of migration into the province."

It's serious business.

Rats are one of the most destructive creatures know to man, according to Borne.

Not only do the carry and spread disease, they devour tonnes of crops each year and contaminate tonnes more with their urine and feces.

Alberta's rat patrol has the authority to destroy anything that rats could infest, including hay bales and abandoned buildings.

They can also inspect container trucks coming into the province they suspect could be carrying the animals, and they have even taken pet rats right out of peoples' homes.

In 1997, an Alberta crop specialist noticed two suspicious-looking pets in a Fairview, Alta., home. The couple, who had just moved to the province from British Columbia, insisted that the animals were gerbils, but the official wasn't fooled.

They turned out to be rats and were destroyed at a local vet's office.

Borne said he welcomes the idea of a tougher law in Saskatchewan because anything helps.

"People must understand that this is a very difficult rodent to eradicate once it is established," Borne said.

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004