An estimated 3 million rats live in New York City – so members of the ‘Rat Pack’ are working to ease human-rodent relations
Iam standing near a tree bed in a bustling Brooklyn park, with only a few feet of dirt separating me from a “small” family of rats – that’s usually around 8 of them, I’m told. I’ve come on this “rat walk” with a few dozen New Yorkers, all milling about awkwardly, subjecting ourselves to the kind of brainless small talk heard at speed dating events. But instead of looking for love, we’ve come to learn more about New York’s rodent population. Tonight, knowing thy enemy means we must slink among the rats.
We’re led by Kathleen Corradi, the city’s famed rat czar, appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, and we are united by our visceral hatred of rats. We don’t want to see them scurry by on late-night walks home, or watch as they slink in and out of trash bags on the street. We especially don’t want them in our homes. As one exterminator put it to famed metro reporter Joseph Mitchell back in 1944: “If you get a few [rats] in your house, there are just two things you can do: you can wait for them to die, or you can burn your house down and start all over again.”
An estimated 3 million rats live in New York – far less than the fabled “five rats for every person” urban legend, but enough to cause problems. While it’s unlikely you’ll catch the plague, rats can spread leptospirosis, with a record 24 New Yorkers coming down the disease in 2023. Rats contaminate food, damage property and make a notoriously difficult city even harder to live in by ick factor alone.
