King Ratter and his Mongrol Hoard*
Jordan Reed and his horde of cutthroat canines swing through West County on their annual pilgrimage, leaving a swath of rodent-free chicken coops in their wake
It’s been a busy week for Jordan Reed. His seasonal migration through the American Northwest brought him on his annual pilgrimage to West County, where he parked his vintage sheep camp trailer on a friend’s farm and spent the ensuing days pruning and shearing locally for profit, and ratting during his leisure hours. That’s right, ratting. For a sliding-scale donation and a case of beer, Reed spends his off-hours catching rats with his four working dogs: Yeti, Kitty, Willie and Charlie.
Reed’s ratting reputation precedes him by a decade or more. Ten years ago, he achieved national and international recognition, appearing on Fox News where he was interviewed by none other than Tucker Carlson. In addition, he appeared in articles in The Press Democrat, Farm Show Magazine and more. Locally, stories of the guy with the rat terriers who cleaned 30 rats out of the neighbor’s chicken coop in 20 minutes were making the rounds. Those stories still do, though Reed no longer strictly uses rat terriers.
Additionally, he’s been contacted by the World Health Organization for his expertise on rodents and sought out for his advice on how to deal with the mice infestation on the Farallon Islands. He’s also trained other ratters, who now own lucrative businesses elsewhere in the country. He has, in fact, helped revitalize a very old tradition all but lost in America: that of ratting with packs of “feist” dogs, a type of working dog (not a breed) with specific tunneling/treeing instincts. Such dogs possess skills that make them excellent ratters.
“I’ve had about 35 dogs in the past 20 years,” Reed said during a recent interview. “So this is dangerous on dogs. It’s hard on dogs. The physical things—forklifts, cows, hay bales falling, that kind of stuff.”
The road to his current success has been long and winding. Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, in “a super cloistered religious environment,” Reed moved to the Bay Area in 1999 with his parents. He was a senior in high school. His parents rode the tech boom for a while and then returned to the South without him, leaving him on his own.
By his account, he discovered ratting experientially, while working for farmers in Sebastopol and West County, cleaning out their chicken coops with the help of his dogs.
“That’s how I discovered it was possible,” he says. “At that point, there were no active ratting packs that I could find in the U.S. I had to start from scratch and access the U.K., where it’s still very active. One of the reasons it’s active over there is there’s six genetic [rat] mutations known to be immune to rat poison.”
At the same time Reed began catching rats in earnest, an event called Barn Hunt—in which trained dogs sniff out a rat in a barn—took off. The phenomenon of the two ratting operations gaining popularity simultaneously worked to accelerate his career.
Then he moved to Oregon. Finding work virtually nonexistent in his new environs, he put his energy into building new income streams and in doing so slipped out of the limelight. Nowadays he lives a semi-nomadic life, planted in Oregon for much of the fall and winter and traveling an annual work circuit during the spring and summer. His route takes him from Oregon to Washington state to numerous locales in California, including West County and the Central Valley, where he prunes trees, shears animals, hunts, and clears chicken coops, dairies and industrial facilities of their rat populations.
When asked how he advertises these days, Reed says: “I don’t. It’s kind of word of mouth, and then I have regulars.”
He no longer turns a profit ratting, but continues to pursue it because he likes to watch his dogs work. In truth, the business end of the endeavor can be frustrating at times. His dogs are trained to catch rats that burrow underground, but many people don’t understand this.
“One of the things that’s a struggle for me is that people want me to do work that I don’t do. People want me to do residential work,” he says. “How am I supposed to do that in the walls of your house, in the insulation under your house? And so people are always wanting me to come do all this residential stuff that I don’t do.”
Still, it’s a rich and rewarding life.
“I decided that I was gonna go for the maximum number of rats and fun,” he says. “I love visiting farms and talking to people. I get to meet people from all these ethnic, political, religious [parts of the] spectrum, and I get to work with a large number of people over 80 years old.”
And he still takes on new clients; just don’t cold-call him.
Anyone interested in contacting Jordan Reed to request his ratting skills should first go to his website at www.themongrolhoard.com, study up on him and read his FAQs. Then, when you understand the type and scope of the ratting work he does and find your needs a match, contact him via email. For additional Mongrol Hoard information, also visit www.facebook.com/themongrolhoard.
*Oh, and about the spelling of his company name…
Here’s the explanation from his website:
Our kennel name is Jreed and his Mongrol Hoard of Rascally Rat Wranglers and this spelling is correct and intentional. “The Mongrol Hoard” as they are affectionately called, is an entendre; “Mongrel” being a less-than-affectionate term used for dogs of unknown descent, and “Mongol” being a fearsome Asian warrior. “Mongrol” is a modern slang for a person of poor attitude. The Mongol Horde is well known, but although I use multiple dogs my “Hoard” of treasured bad attitudes is very unique.
We expect emails about this article…
So we thought we’d save you the time. This is a letter exchange, reprinted from Jordan’s blog, between Jordan and someone who learned about what he does and doesn’t approve.
Hi,
I feel extremely compelled to tell you that I find your business extremely offensive. You’re subjecting rats to extreme amount of pain and torture. Being attacked by an animal to be killed is extremely violent and inappropriate. Also the fact that you’re subjecting your dogs to diseases and infections that they can pick up from conflict from the animal bites/scrapes/cuts is shameful, ask any vet. We live in a sophisticated country at this point, and I think what you’re doing is completely inappropriate, and you should feel terrible about yourself. I’ll be sending your ad to the animal welfare agencies and also animal activist clubs. I wish no good luck for your company, and I hope it fails quickly. I also hope that no harm comes to any of the animals involved because you’re basically just having them fight each other, and that’s very very uneducated.
Disappointingly,
Rachael
Rachel,
Thanks for the time you took to write an email.
My personal guess is that you do not know much about country living or farming. Growing your own food and meat is good, and eggs too. Unfortunately with hay and grain and other food around, you end up dealing with rats. This especially happens when people that have no country living skills start little hobby farms and homesteads.
If you have not dealt with an infestation level of rats firsthand, you also likely do not have any experience with how aggressive a Norway rat is. I’ve been called to farms where they are killing baby and adult chickens, and also to farms where they are chewing on baby cows. This is not even to mention that feces in the feed can cause animals to abort and other issues. They are no joke, and they also cause damage by undermining foundations and can cause buildings to fall down eventually.
The next thing I would mention is that you should go and research rat poison. I had a dog poisoned and that is one of the reasons I started catching rats. It was through that experience that I learned a rat takes 3-7 days to die while in terrible pain and bleeding from the internal organs. If that is not bad enough then any animal, hawk or owl that eats the rat will also ingest all the poison and die. There was bobcats and mountain lions this year in CA that were tagged animals in studies that died from just that, there are studies that show almost all the raptors hit by cars have ingested rat poisons.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1111-poisoned-puma-20151112-story.html
I work sometimes in education, talking to groups about the danger of rat poison in the environment and also with children. I forgot to mention that certified organic farmers cannot use poison.
http://www.raptorsarethesolution.org/
While we may live in a sophisticated country, as evidenced by sophisticated Donald Trump(?), we are less connected to nature and our food than we ever have been before. I am not ashamed of myself, and the conclusions you draw are not based in the reality of who I am, or have anything to do with me or the work that I do with dogs.
I wish you all the best of luck in love and life.
Jreed
P.S. All the dead rats that I catch are donated to raptors.
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Thank you for the range of stories you share. Thank you as well for including a common complaint about his work and his incredibly thoughtful and detailed response.
Thanks for the great article about Jordan. He's a personal friend of my wife and myself and a finer, more civic minded individual would be hard to find. Jordan is the real thing, a man who walks the talk of doing work well, with integrity, and joy.