Now Georgetown pet owners will likely be in a frenzy protecting their pooches from inhaling the pellets during their evening strolls. Before we know it, all fuzzy creatures will be extinct in Georgetown if someone doesn't stop this wild mysterious rat killer. It's like having a kidnapper on the loose, but worse.

Jane Huelle of The Dog Shop on Wisconsin Avenue told News4 that she spotted the neon green rat poison on the sidewalk near her business. They are also being spotted near other businesses too. Maybe we're giving this rat poisoner too much credit. They could be after our domesticated four-legged friends after all.

Huelle says she knows of three dogs in northwest D.C. that died from rat poisoning this year.

The Georgetown BID isn't pleased:

"It seems that some individual(s) took abatement measures into their own hand(s) in the form of spreading pesticide pellets in and around public spaces and private property. This isn't the way to resolve the issue. This kind of behavior is illegal, as the use of pesticides in public space is regulated by law. It is dangerous, as it puts our children and pets at risk of coming into direct contact with pesticide products. Improperly used, pesticides kill... people and pets. Moreover, these products, haphazardly spread about, end up in the sewer and ultimately in the Potomac. These actions will not be tolerated."

Photo by wsilver, via Flickr.

Speaking of rats, did you notice a theme in our coverage yesterday? Between the post on Manon Cleary's long-held affection for rats, the video of Andrew Zimmern shuddering at the smell of grilled rat innards, and the item about the Washington Humane Society's search for an opossum killer, it was a positively rodent-rific day.

Also, Gallaudet University's annual rat funeral was on Wednesday. In this 60-plus-year-old tradition, freshmen buy or catch rats at the beginning of the school year, care for them as pets, and then hold a funeral–complete with black garb and procession– for those animals that have died at the end of second semester in order to mark the completion of their first year at college. Students commemorate the event with rubber rats rather than real ones now, something we learned thanks to the intrepid reporting of our own Kim Chi Ha.

The Oprah Winfrey Network announced plans for a documentary series that follows eating disorder patients in therapy. The network's namesake is the same woman who popularized the mantra "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" (also widely quoted by Kate Moss last year), and who is notorious for her dissatisfaction with her yo-yoing weight. Hmm.

Protests are like lines: everyone wants to join one. People are up in arms about Arizona— and AriZona. Activists protesting the state's new immigration law are calling for the boycott of everything made in the state, including the iced tea company. The problem is, AriZona is actually made in New York. Whoops.

The White House Correspondents Dinner is tomorrow, and keep your eye out for some additional famous faces in the District over the next few days. The guest list includes Hollywood types Steven Spielberg, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jessica Alba; former social secretary Desiree Rogers; and fashion designers Jason Wu and Donatella Versace. After learning of Versace's planned attendance, @JenConnor of Arlington tweeted, "Am I the only one who can only see the SNL skit?"

Rat funeral photo courtesy of gallaudetalumni.com.

Alba and Versace photo courtesy of zimbio.com.

Rats hanging out in cars and eating essential parts is a common enough problem in the District of Columbia. As City Desk previously chronicled, it happens in Adams Morgan. It happens at 15th and U. Kathryn Kailian, an esthetician who lives in Dupont Circle, had to take her car in six times for service because of rat damage. At one point, she submitted a claim for the $1,200 her dealership charged to completely re-wire her vehicle. "Our insurance company dropped us," she says.

Fed up, Kailian Googled for solutions and found coyote pee. She ordered a bottle of it on the Internet, sprayed it on her engine, and hasn't had a problem since. One bottle will last her "for years" since she only spritzes every few months. The smell dissipates pretty quickly and the rats have left her alone, despite the fact that she parks in an alley with Dumpsters filled by Five Guys, Chipotle, Cosi, and other delicious-to-rats restaurants.

But how does a seller of coyote piss collect coyote piss?

For the answer, I turn to the self-described "peeman," Ken Johnson, who has been in the urine business for more than 20 years. Johnson, 57, has a wife, three daughters, and a nice house in Maine, all supported by the sale of animal waste.

He asserts the products at predatorpee.com—whether from wolf, bobcat, fox, or mountain lion—are the real stuff, not synthetic, and not dressed-up dog pee (although dog pee is for sale, too, to help Rags figure out where he should go). How it works is only slightly mysterious.

Johnson has contracts with zoos and wildlife preserves "all over the country" whose employees collect animals' pee, mostly in drains inside the exhibits. The mysterious part is where these places are. Johnson doesn't like to get specific. "We've run into problems with PETA people," he says.

His site cautions that all of the suppliers are regulated by state and local agencies and that the animals are treated humanely. He says in a phone interview that no one is pumping them with water or Budweiser to make them go.

Basically, it's a moneymaker for nonprofits, a moneymaker for Johnson, and a solution for people, like Kailian, who've had it. In Florida, coyote pee wards off iguanas. In Japan, wolf pee keeps wild boar out of rice paddies. And for anywhere there are "unwanted people or animals," Johnson's newest product is Skunk 'Em, a proven agent to stop loiterers, he says. What works for what pest depends on the food chain. For example, somewhere inside an urban rat's brain is a primal fear of a coyote, even though that coyote probably never roamed anywhere near where the rat has ever lived.

As for making his living from piss, the Peeman's got a healthy sense of humor about it (his daughters, however—ranging in age from 15 to 32—are pretty much mortified). After fielding the question about how he gets the pee more times than he can recall, he created a spot on his site that details "How I Became a Urine Collector" by "P. Catcher." It runs alongside a testimonial written from the coyote's perspective.

Trained as a marketer, Johnson acquired the company in 1986 from a former client. Back then, the products were bought primarily by hunters to attract deer. But Johnson started noticing that people in nonrural areas were buying his products—suburban gardeners were an early indication of wider applications.

Then there was the spike Predatorpee got when Dave Barry included bobcat pee in his annual gift guide, which runs in the Washington Post Magazine. "People wanted to buy it for their lawyers, for their ex-wives," says Johnson.

And then, Al Gore invented the Internet and Predatorpee began flowing like never before.

These days, the urine is sold exclusively online and comes in several forms. A spray bottle of coyote piss runs $25.99, plus S&H.

Johnson has an office/warehouse on his 40 acres outside of Bangor, a good distance form the house. He's become desensitized, to some degree, to the smell. "Probably more so than my wife," he says. "She knows when I've been working with Skunk 'Em."

Some time ago, City Desk featured a story about Adams Morgan resident Sid Binks, who had a rat problem. The rats ate through his ignition wires and his new car wouldn't start.

Mr. Binks, you have company down at 15th and U. Sylvia Keys, a calligrapher who's lived in a condo there for 18 years, recently posted to the U Street Listserv that she finally scored an alley parking spot and, guess what? There are rats in the alley. And guess what else? They are "living, eating and partying on our motors. And leaving 'debris' behind," Keys writes.

And that's not all: "My taillight went out and the dealer said that rats had been chewing away the wires, thus costing me $200. And yes, the dealership did find a dead rat baby around my motor."

There's no way she's giving up her spot in "a very nice, newly bricked, alleyway" to battle the masses on 15th Street again. So she turned to the Listserv for help. The Listserv directed her to D.C. vermin czar Gerard Brown, who has a lot on his to-do list, including, as our almost-old cover story points out, bedbugs.

So what's a lady calligrapher to do? Well, Binks' mechanic wrapped steel wool around vulnerable wires, which seemed to help. Another option? Move. Sylvia Keys may have found U Street before it became Obama-cool, but so did the rats and they'll outlast even two terms of the re-re-re-rebirth of U Street.

Photo of "Flat Rat" taken by yours truly, coincidentally enough, at 17th and U