NY: Animal Vermin Town

Garbage is overflowing in the city where local politicos and merchants alike are upset with reduced pickups, due to budget cuts. The Department of Sanitation tells Newsday that each of the city's 25,000+ sidewalk garbage cans are emptied at least once a day, and high traffic cans are emptied up to three times a day, and this is all they can do, given resources. Additionally, the cans overflow due residents dumping their household trash in the near sidewalk garbage can. Queens merchants have Adopt-a-Basket programs, where they will replace trash bags before the sanitation department comes. Clever! And good for the community.

Unfortunately, trash lingering on the street only encourages the city to be overrun with rats. If it's not firehouses in Queens, it's a soup kitchen in Harlem. When Mayor Bloomberg was asked about the rat problem during a press conference welcoming the production of Whoopi Goldberg's new NBC show to the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens (sidebar: Pro - TV production in NY; Con - Whoopi Goldberg, in "Whoopi," playing a "proud, opinionated lady" not named Whoopi but Mavis Rae...) the Times noted this exchange:

Whoopi: You should get some cats.
Mayor Bloomberg: I think these are New York rats.
Whoopi: You need those Ninja cats.

Ninja cats! Now that is truly clever. And cool.