Now that New York City has named its very first rat czar, residents of the big apple with stories to tell about close encounters with the beasts are coming forward.
Kathleen Corradi, New York City’s new director of rodent mitigation, has her work cut out for her. It appears that New York City rats are a special breed, performing super-rodent feats of strength and agility. One public health analyst was living on 112th Street in Manhattan, where she swears she witnessed a rat “flip itself over while stuck to a glue trap, pry itself off, and run away.”
In a second-floor apartment in Brooklyn, a woman says that she lifted her kitchen garbage bag when a rat leaped out, “parkoured off my leg,” and disappeared behind the oven.
Nearly every New Yorker has a rat horror story, which isn’t surprising. There are two million rats at the last rat census count. And some people report being so traumatized by their rodent close encounter that they’re forced to move.
Mr. Regenspan, a software engineer, heard a splashing sound while brushing his teeth. “I screamed, flushed, he swam back down. I poured in a bunch of cleaning products and flushed again,” he said.
He did not see the rat again, but he was traumatized, and tried his best never to sit down on that toilet afterward, instead using the commode at work for sitting purposes. He did not stay in that apartment much longer. “Once I moved, I lost the acute fear,” Mr. Regenspan said. “But I still close the lid on the toilet. Always.”
The rats have become nearly domesticated, so accustomed to humans they’ve become.
“I was just minding my own business on the train,” Ms. Schofield said, “and a rat just, like, wanders over my foot. And he was in no hurry.” Her reaction was vocal: “I shrieked because, you know. There’s a rat walking across my foot.”
With all the human-rat encounters, you would think that rat bites would bea huge problem. Andrew MacMillan, a 34-year-old product manager, was once a victim of a rare rat bite.
He was walking his dog, Islay, in Fort Greene Park last year, when she sniffed into some foliage and came out with a rat in her mouth. “I tried to open her jaws to get the rat out in some harebrained attempt to save the rat,” Mr. MacMillan said.
The rat bit his finger, and Mr. MacMillan began bleeding profusely. “Apparently rats have teeth that are like broken glass,” he said. “I can indeed confirm this to be true.”
MacMillian saw an urgent care doctor the next day who gave him some antibiotics. Much to his surprise, he got a visit from the Department of Health. “They didn’t announce that they were coming. They just kind of like, showed up,” he said.
“Apparently only 100 people get bit by rats every year in New York City,” Mr. MacMillan said, “which explains why everyone I have told about this is in some kind of disbelief about it. I guess it also makes me a part of one of New York City’s most exclusive clubs.”
Rats are a problem in every major city, and as far as New York City is concerned, Orkin only ranks them number two in the country. The number one rattiest city in America eight years running is Chicago.
Metaphorically speaking, that’s hardly a surprise.
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