Somerville's City Council did not green-light a nighttime rat shoot on Thursday. It sent Ward 7 Councilor Emily Hardt's order — permission for pest-control sharpshooters to kill rats with air rifles — to the Legislative Matters Committee.
That referral is the whole of the recorded action, and it sits on top of an older argument about poisons. The Somerville Times has already documented Hardt pressing the point that rodenticides were not controlling the city's rats, while state wildlife officials have tied second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides to bald eagle deaths.
A Referral, and a Reading of the Room
The Cambridge Somerville Independent described Thursday's focal action as a committee referral, not a finished ordinance. Hardt, who represents Ward 7, proposed the air-rifle order. Councilors seemed ready to approve a one-time exception.
Seemed ready is not a roll call. Somerville generally prohibits discharging firearms in the city, so any shoot would need the council to allow it. The order is meant to stand in for a rat-control method Hardt has tied to a poison ban — poisons that can enter the food chain and kill animals that are not rats.
Councilor JT Scott floated something broader than a one-off: a rat-hunting season from Aug. 15 through Nov. 15. That idea was a proposal in the discussion, not a season on the books. Councilor Will Mbah's contribution, as reported, was that the ordinance was interesting.
Poisons, Raptors and a Different Pitch
Hardt told colleagues she was convinced air-rifle hunts are more humane than anticoagulant rodenticides, and that residents were eager after trying other methods and getting frustrated. She also said air-rifle hunting is widely used in Europe, where rodenticides are more restricted. Those are her claims about what residents want and what Europe does.
An eagle named MK died from rodenticide poisoning in 2023.
Somerville had already been asked to move on the same family of chemicals. The Times reported that Hardt and John Link requested an amendment to Chapter 6 of the Code of Ordinances banning anticoagulant rodenticides on city-owned property. The city administration sought a Home Rule Petition that would ban FGARs and SGARs on private property. Both items went to the Legislative Matters Committee for a recommendation. That earlier referral is not the same act as Thursday's air-rifle order.
What the Company Says a Night Looks Like
The Independent identified Secured Environments Pest and Wildlife Services — based in Pembroke, with offices in Cambridge, and also operating in Rhode Island — as the firm in the picture. Its own air-rifle page says it serves the Greater Boston area and Providence, and describes the work as a humane alternative to poisons and trapping. Nothing in the available record shows the company has already run this operation in Somerville.
On that page, the company says operations use highly trained marksmen with precision PCP air rifles fitted with thermal or night-vision optics, and that local police are notified before and after. It says that in many cases 50 to 80 rats can be eliminated in a single service. That is a company range for many cases, not a count from a Somerville job.
Hardt's account of the method adds operational color the company page does not: teams of two to three sharpshooters, set up at night on a requested property, working three to four hours, usually for one or two nights, with a perimeter of cones and banners meant to warn people off. The Independent also reported that air rifles have been used elsewhere in Massachusetts over the past two and a half years. Treat the cones, the hours and the tallies as descriptions, not as inspected results.
Police in the Loop, and a State Limit
City policy analyst Brandan Salisbury said police are aboard with the plan. The Independent also reported that Somerville police are aware of it. Councilor Jesse Clingan still wanted police views confirmed before anyone treated that as settled.
Clingan had a more personal brief. He said air rifles are not deadly to humans, and that he had been shot with one and had shot other people with one. In a debate about letting marksmen work a dense neighborhood at night, that is a councilor's risk assessment, not a safety study.
State law draws a harder line than a cone line. Chapter 269, Section 12B says no person shall discharge a BB shot, pellet or other object from an air rifle or BB gun into, from or across a street, alley, public way, or railroad or railway right of way. A West Somerville block is mostly public way. Police notification, which the company says it provides, is not the same thing as a statutory exception.
Rats Next Door, and a File Still Open
Somerville's version, for now, is a committee file: sharpshooters instead of bait, framed as a one-time exception rather than Scott's Aug. 15-to-Nov. 15 season.
The order sits with Legislative Matters. No recommendation date was part of Thursday's reported action, and a reading of the room is not a permit to shoot. Whatever the committee sends back will still have to clear a city that generally bars discharging firearms, a state rule against firing air-rifle pellets across public ways, and a police position Clingan asked to hear confirmed rather than assumed.
