Results tagged “vermin”

This town is crawling with mice and rats and terrifying mutant cockroaches, so it's funny WABC "Eyewitness News" is so shocked to find the city school system has a bit of a rodent problem. The fact that school lunch is unappetizing isn't exactly flashing-siren news, but this is revolting nonetheless: Records obtained through Freedom of Information show that 545 school cafeterias had one or more critical health violations, and about one-third of those violations were for mice and mice droppings. Perhaps student Jose Rodriguez said it best: "Nasty. It's disgusting, but it's really not surprising."

Several NYU dining halls were just points away from being shut down by the Health Department after inspections, and the sanitary conditions have greatly deteriorated at the 13 cafeterias listed on the DOH website. The only dining hall that improved was the Hayden Dining Hall, but that's not saying much: It only dropped from 27 violation points to 26—28 is the dirty magic number that gets an eatery shut down. It seems the big problem is vermin, which multiplied because of "the severity of construction in and around NYU, which creates movement and migrations," says Director of Dining Services Owen Moor. Speaking to the Washington Square News, one cafeteria worker was more blunt: "The building is infested with rats, so there isn’t much we can do personally about that." Senior Anisha Noble sums up the student perspective: "That is disgusting." Totally. It's a miracle the students who recently occupied the Kimmel Building cafeteria survived without having their stomachs pumped: Not only did the dining hall tie for second-worst (24 points), but it was also cited for serving food with artificial trans-fat. No wonder they were so outraged!

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.”

Continue reading "A Plague Upon All Our Houses: Rats"

For the second time in as many years, the famous Stage Deli in Manhattan was shuttered by the Dept. of Health after inspections found the restaurant infested with vermin. The Times Square institution was last closed in mid-2006 after it accrued too many points during a health inspection (points are for violations and a score above 28 is a failure.) As reported in The New York Times, the DOH inspected the Stage last Wednesday and assigned it a failing score. The deli was allowed to remain open while it corrected major violations, but a subsequent inspection 48 hours later still resulted in insufficient cleanliness.