The Rats of New York City

"There are more rats in New York City than people, many more. This is their City. This is their story." This quote was attributed to me in my article A Story Of Rats In New York City published by Associated Content, 2007.

I lived in New York City for the first 29 years of my life. I have seen many rats. In the story above I describe an attack of rats in broad daylight by a pack of rats on a woman walking on Anne Street near Theater Alley in New York. This attack was by about half a dozen rats on one woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily for her this area is next to City Hall and well travelled during the noontime hour when the attack occurred. They were beaten off her and she suffered mainly from hysterics. A vast extermination effort began in the vacant and fenced off lot on Anne Street. Several hundred duffle sized bags of dead rats were loaded onto trucks and carted to some destination unknown to me.

If dead 50 rats could fit in each of these large burlap sacks, then a count of thousands of rats were exterminated from a relatively small lot the size where a medium sized building had once stood. Several blocks south west it was much worse.

I had worked in the World Trade Center way before the events of 9/11 laid those towers low. One night a co-worker and I worked on a project until 2 AM. When we exited the building we had to cross a street to get to the subway which was our only way home. This street has since become a victim of the World Trade Center collapse. However, then it was a two way street with a small center divider between east and west traffic. We could plainly see a solid stream of rats running down the divider tail to nose in a western direction. We waited about one hour for this migration to end but it didn't. We knew our only hope was to jump over the rats and hope we didn't fall or step on any who might by force of numbers could easily have overwhelmed us. I have never jumped further in my life than the leap I took that night. We both made it across the street with no incident. Simple math gave me a estimation of about 35,000 rats we had seen just during the time we there. If the migration lasted 3 hours that certainly the number would have increased to well over 100,000 rodents.

So how many rats are there in all of New York City? There is a rule of thumb that is often heard which says there is about 1 rat per person in New York. This would work out to 9,000,000 rats. In an article by the New York Time, July 12, 2000, entitled Rats Love New York, That Doesn't Make Them Welcome, an estimation much higher than the 1 per person model was given of up to 72 million rats living in the City. Robert Sullivan, reported on the David Letterman show May 14, 2004 that the number was greatly exaggerated and only about a quarter of a million rats lived in New City.

My personal experiences make me believe that the number is greater than 1 million and probably closer to 10 million or more. The infrastructure under the City consists of hundreds of miles of sewer lines, subway tunnels (many long abandoned), aqueducts, and utility tunnels. The river is well populated with rats living in the storage docks and warehouses. Buildings in many areas are infested as well.

My experience makes me believe that the one per person theory is probably a fairly accurate estimate. Even if this is true it is still a major problem with over one thousand rat bites reported per year to City authorities.