A YouTube video of a rat dragging a whole slice of pizza down the subway stairs in New York City went viral. Are rats taking over New York?
Calls about rats to the city’s 311-complaint hotline are at a record high. The complaints at the end of 2015 were on pace to exceed the 24,000 the hotline received each of the previous two years.
New Yorker Nora Prentice lives on the Upper West Side. She says she avoids a neighborhood park because it is home to a colony of about two hundred rats. She has lodged two complaints with the city, but both were closed after she was told they are “working on the problem.”
She’s not the only one frustrated by these cheeky vermin. The city’s top financial officer, Comptroller Scott Stringer, thinks of himself as the city’s “rat czar.” After looking into the problem, he criticized the city’s health department. He says it is not responding fast enough to rat complaints. He has also called out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for failing to keep the city’s subway stations clean. He believes such conditions allow New York’s rats to thrive.
Local lore claims there is a rat in the city for each of its 8.4 million people. A Columbia University doctoral student did a study last year. He used statistical analysis to estimate the city’s rat population at two million.
Scientists and city officials disagree with his findings. They say it’s impossible to accurately determine the number of rats in the city. Caroline Bragdon is a health department scientist and the city’s rat expert. She says that you can estimate the number of rats in an outdoor area by counting the burrows and multiplying by 10. But in buildings, sewers, and other city structures, there’s no way to accurately estimate.
So what’s behind the spike in complaints? Are there really more rats? New York City officials have been fighting the rats for decades. They say they believe the rat population has been holding steady for the past few years. They think rats became bolder and more visible last winter. During large snowfalls, trash was left sitting on sidewalks for days, drawing rats. And complaining has gotten easier with the city’s new 311-smartphone app.
Dr. Bragdon’s team is on the job. She used to have fewer than a dozen workers. But she now has a team of nearly 50 and a budget of $3 million to try to bring the rat problem under control.
But even if the rat problem improves, rats won’t be completely eliminated—or even invisible. Whether you’re a celebrity or a cab driver, no one in New York City can completely avoid rats. As Proverbs 30:28 reminds us, even kings’ palaces aren’t immune to pests.
