A Story About Rats in New York City

What are there more of than people in New York? If you said any type of vermin you guessed correctly. Roaches, I hate these little critters. But I hate rats worse. They live in the sewers, in the basements, in the walls of buildings, in construction areas, in alley ways and in the docks and rivers. There are millions of them in the downtown district alone. Late at night, they emerge from their hiding places to forage. They form a stream of living creatures as they migrate after midnight from their hidden lairs they call home to scour the streets for bits of hot dogs, pizza crusts, subway sandwich leftovers in trash cans, on sidwalks and the hundreds of thousand pounds of edible trash left over by Brokers, Lawyers and every worker, who works in the downtown area.

If you ever have the bad luck of having to work very late at night and to take the subway home, you may have had to literally jump over the swarming rodents to get to the subway station. When you get to the station, look at the tracks in the shadows and darker areas. You will see them crawling around scavenging for food.

Sometimes at night a car does drive through the downtown area and produces road kill which lets you know what the rodents look like. They are only slightly smaller than a cat with greasy, dirty fur and long yellow gnawing teeth. These teeth can eat through wood easily, cables with copper core, and even concrete with only a little more difficulty. Once in a while they will show themselves in daylight. It is not a pleasant sight.

They have attacked people as well. A pack of rats when disturbed can bring down a person with a well coordinated attack. Their attacks on children in tenements are well know and well documented. However, they have emerged from lairs and attacked people walking in the street in broad daylight. I have seen them attack a woman walking by a fenced off pit of a long ago demolished building. Many of the people on their lunch break beat them off of her with briefcases, canes, and by well place kicks. She was taken to the hospital with multiple bite wounds on her legs. Luckily she kept her footing and they didn't reach her neck or head.

The next day there were about 30 exterminators with clubs, rat poison, and large burlap sacks. They were fully dressed in protective body suits including high thick boots. They opened the wooden fence and descended into the pit. Dozens upon dozens of filled, large, burlap sacks packed with dead vermin were carted away in dump trucks during the day. This process went on every day for weeks. I think they just scratched the surface with their labors. But eventually the street was re-opened to pedestrians and the wooden fence resealed.

You would think they would get cats by the truck load to fight this problem which exists even as I write this article. The truth is that a cat is no match for two or three New York rats. They are tough. Dog breeds used for rat killing would not fare any better. So the rats are accepted as just another New York problem. They are ignored. How many are there? Are there ten million rats in New York City? No, think hundreds of millions of them in the five Boroughs, maybe more. There is no way that anyone can accurately estimate their numbers.

Some words of warning if you walk down the dark streets of New York at night. Stay away from the sewer opening. Stay out of dark alleyways. Don't look to see what is making that scratching sound in the basement. Play by New York rules in New York.

Oh and by they way, have a good night.