Rat-Repellent Bags: D.C.'s Solution or Idea Headed for the Trash?

Dussich said he added a couple of ingredients he won't divulge and voila-- a rat-impervious garbage bag was born.

"I'm the rat tamer," he said.

If any cities' rat populations need taming, the District's is among them. Although city officials say they can't quantify their rat population, they know that annual resident complaints have exceeded 3,000. The agitation was sufficient that then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) once convened a rat summit to seek out solutions.

"It's gross, and it's way worse this year," said Mindy Moretti, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Adams Morgan, where rats indulge in the plentiful dumpster helpings generated by the neighborhood's restaurants. "You see them all over: in the park, in the playground, in the alleys. It's a regular smorgasbord for rats."

Bobby Corrigan has his doubts that the Repel-X trash bag is the answer. A rodent consultant for more than 30 years with a doctorate in vertebrate pest management, Corrigan has advised District officials about how to control rodent populations.

Over the course of his career, Corrigan said, he has seen various rat repellent innovations come and go without success.

The concept of turning rats off with an odor, he said, is not original, having been tested by the military as far back as the 1940s. "None of it proved to be effective," he said. As for Repel-X, he said the trash bag should undergo extensive scientific and academic review before anyone becomes a believer.

"There are all kinds of people who make all kinds of claims about special gizmos, ultrasonic machines, they're going to build the better mousetrap," he said. "If someone came up with a truly effective way, that would be a major scientific breakthrough."

A malodorous trash bag, he said, is not going to stop an animal "that's so tough, so adaptable."

Dussich is undeterred. He points to the results of testing by a Colorado laboratory he hired, which found that the bags repel rats 76 to 89 percent of the time.

A news release touting the bags claims that "Central Park has even gotten on board and is using it to prevent raccoons from tearing apart that park's garbage bags."

But Jama Adams, a spokeswoman for New York's parks department, said the agency has given up on the bags because "they don't seemed to have worked effectively for us."

Repel-X is not without its loyalists, however. Andrew Hardwick, a deputy parks commissioner on Long Island, tried them at his house before using them in the parks, where he said they have deterred squirrels and raccoons.

"If they were crap, I'd say it, but they aren't," he said. "I've saved money because I don't have to have my people clean up after the bags get ripped up."

Dussich is buoyed by such reports. Now that he believes he has figured out rats, he said he's ready for a new conquest.

"I want to try it on bears," he said.