February 23, 2004
Rats in the City
If Robert Sullivan's riveting Times magazine article about city rats scared the bejesus out of you (an eleven inch rat, with a ten inch tail...shudder), Gothamist offers you this sweet tale: A sanitation worker came across a litter of day-old black Labrador puppies in Queens. At first, Stephen Falk thought the puppies, freezing behind a Dumpster, might be rats: "I looked down near my feet, blinked, took a second look, then a third, and decided it was a puppy." The puppies are adorable and up for adoption at the North Shore Animal League; call (516) 883-7575 to adopt.
Sullivan's book, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, does seem like it'll be an interesting read. On an empty stomach, of course.
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Did you know for every Person in NYC, there are 10 Rats . . . . . 80 Million Rats in NY alone . . . spooky
Don't give all rats a bad name. I've had pet rats for years and they are some of the best pets I have ever had. Of course, I did not just adopt them off of the street, now that would be scary.
my sources in bay ridge tell me they call the really big ones "ratcoons"
Sullivan's book about the Meadowlands was really enjoyable. I'm looking forward to reading about the rats.
Walking home in Hell's Kitchen Sat night, we saw a rat scurry across the sidewalk into a building...then two more...then four more...then ten more. It was a rat family reunion! They were all different sizes, too.
This other girl watching the rat crossing from further down the side walk was shrieking, but I was just glad I didn't live in that particular building. And glad I have a large, ferocious cat who has really enjoyed killing rodents in the past and wouldn't hesitate to do it again.
Still...that was a lot of rats.
i lived in new york for 2 years. then i moved to the ghetto college neighborhood of Boston: Allston. While New York may win the prize for largest population of rats, Allston wins for size! you need to see these things. they dwarf any new york rat. i found that it helped to refer to them as 'bunnies.' It diminished their foulness a bit.
Oh my -- repressed Allston memories coming back to me -- Kristen is sooooo right on. I have seen both the Allston rats and the New York rats. While neither are welcome, NYC rats are nothin' compared to those Beantown "bunnies". The first time I saw one, I swore it was a possum. It was exactly the size of a possum--about the size of a well-fed housecat. I still get the shivers when I think of that nasty thing.
The Rats are so big in NYC the cats carry machine guns.
what is a shame is people throw food every where on the ground espasauly in train stations and are so many garbage cans.