Most of us accept rats as a fact of life. They live in tunnels and sewers, gnaw through walls, contaminate food, and resist nearly every attempt to push them back. A 2023 estimate put New York City’s rat population at about three million animals, roughly one rat for every three human residents. Almost nowhere do authorities try to get rid of rats altogether. The goal is usually to reduce sightings of them, limit the damage they cause, and coexist as painlessly as possible. That makes one place stand out. Alberta, a Canadian province, is rat free, and has been for more than seventy years. On a map of global rat distribution, Alberta is a blank spot in an otherwise unbroken sea of rodents. Get the print magazine Subscribe for $100 to receive six beautiful issues per year. Subscribe Other places have eliminated rats too: South Georgia and a handful of New Zealand islands have done so to protect endangered birds.…