June 2, 2008
A Plague Upon All Our Houses: Rats
The common rule of thumb is that there are eight or nine rats for every human being in New York City, which means a scurrying verminous population of 64-72 million lurking in walls, below streets, in trash cans, and sometimes in plain sight. Being a rat catcher or, better yet, a rat exterminator is a profession that will never end, and the NY Times spoke to some exterminators about the unwinnable battle.
Mr. Cruz, who started working as an exterminator in 1996, opened his business five years ago, and in his opinion, there is a difference between Manhattan and Brooklyn rodents. “Manhattan rats look like cats, not like rats,” Mr. Cruz said. “Brooklyn rats look like rats.”In 1944, Joseph Mitchell wrote about rats in NYC, and described the brown Norwegian rat (rattus norvegicus) in the following terms.Asked why he and his assistant chose this line of work, Mr. Cruz replied: “It’s for the money. There will always be work for us in this city.”
In addition to being the most numerous, the brown rat is the dirtiest, the fiercest, and the biggest. "The untrained observer," a Public Health Service doctor remarked not long ago, "invariably spreads his hands wide apart when report the size of a rat he has seen, indicating that it was somewhat smaller than a stud horse but a whole lot bigger than a bulldog." They are big enough, God protect us, without exaggerating."Mitchell continued to write that "Veteran exterminators say that even they are unable to be calm around rats. 'I've been in this business thirty-one years and I must've seen fifty thousand rats, but I've never got accustomed to the look of them,' one elderly exterminator said recently. 'Every time I see one my heart sinks and I get the belly flutters.'"
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common journalistic rules of thumb are to not rely on exaggerated statistics that are generally disputed and to not refer to hyperbolic anecdotes that are 60 years out of date.
also, original content is nice.
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Belly Flutters sounds very tasty.
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This was around 1999-2000, during the summer. It was about 4:00 am, and I just left a bar in the East Village, that isn't there anymore. I was stumbling over towards Broadway, and there was a guido/hoochie couple in front of me. When they hit Astor Place, they both ran screaming towards me yelling 'Oh my Gaawd! Raaaats!'. I ignored, having seen rats daily since I was born. When I crossed over that block, the entire street and sidewalk were covered in rats. There was literally rats covering every inch of the street and sidewalk,a writhing swarming mess around a couple of open dumpsters. You could have tap danced on rats towards Broadway. I also backtracked, headed South and then cut over to Bway. I think there may truly be several rats per person in the city.
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Just one more reason that the average citizen should be armed.
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I thought Bloomberg was only about yay big (thumb and index finger extended).
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Now if we can only harvest them for biofuel ... and I'm not talking about spinning wheels.
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Yup. Everyone should be allowed to carry a .22 plinker & take on rats. Rodents come out at wee hours, so a chance of stray bullets hitting humans should be rather low. And those who loiter at weird hours, risk being shot already.
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Anyone read the Plague?
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it's nothing that a little revising of the city's pellet-gun laws won't fix...
no joke, I would patrol subway platforms at all hours of the night racking up rat kills if I could
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New York needs a "Ratenfanger", a strange person out of old germanic myth that plays a flute and marches out of town with the rats in tow. I nominate Hillary Clinton for this very prestigious gig.
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Snowman: try the 50cal Blowgun, but avoid the "stunner" tips. Minimal ricochet, dead-on with some practice. And nobody thinks you're acrrying some mad assault rifle. Very effectice.
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seriously though... rats the size of a small horse... bigger then dogs? I suppose thirty years of inhaling pesticides might allow for hallucinations like that..
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I too have imagined how much run it would be if the city instituted midnight rat vigilante events in the parks.
You could go up to the park where after leaving a drivers license and perhaps a criminal background check, parks dept employees would hand you powerful enough pellet gun for your rat slaying enjoyment. I'm sure it could become a revenue producing event.
I would pay $20 for a few hours of Urban Hunting! Get Ted Nugent to endorse it. Bring your own night vision goggles.
Sure PETA would protest but really no one gives a fu*k about killing rats.
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If PETA complains ask them to step out and lay down in front of a Seventh Avenue express train with sugar laced rice pellets spread all over their body.
I could go for the $20 fee only if you supply the pellet gun and also the pellets. Otherwise it should be $35 plus a credit card or cash deposit of $300. We don't want scum bums joining in here.