With eyes peeking out from a hidden burrow in the grass, the creature quickly scurries toward a block that buzzed with life just hours earlier. It’s one of the nocturnal rulers of the street — rats — poised to attack the garbage in black plastic bags piled high on the sidewalks of New York City, awaiting pickup by sanitation workers.
Street garbage has become a daily banquet for New York’s rat population. The city generates about 14 billion pounds of trash a year, potentially feeding roughly 3 million rats. That’s the number of rodents estimated in the city in a 2023 study.
Controlling the rat population in the city remains a challenge despite numerous efforts. In January, the city Sanitation Department said New York was winning the war on rats, as rodent sightings in mitigation zones were down across the city.
In early July, Mayor Eric Adams joined department officials to unveil the city’s first official trash bin meant to keep the streets cleaner and curb the rat population. All residential buildings with one to nine units will be required to put trash in rat-proof containers as of Nov 12.
Once the rule takes effect, officials say that 70 percent of all trash in New York City will be containerized.
The latest attempt to lower or control the number of rodents featured the formation of the “Rat Pack”, a nickname inspired by the group of 1950s celebrities that included Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Adams asked New Yorkers to join the “elite squad of dedicated anti-rat activists”.
“We’re really proud of the city’s efforts of going after public enemy number one. Now we’re doing something new. We’re recruiting an entirely new generation of the ‘Rat Pack,'” Adams said during a news conference in Brooklyn on Sunday.
Though anyone can join, the initiative is designed for building superintendents, property managers, community gardeners and business owners.
“From cutting our rats’ food supplies to closing down rat havens, Rat Pack members will be able to defend their communities from rodents and achieve our goal of making New York City the least rat-friendly city in America,” he said. “We need you to help reduce the rat population in our city, and the rat swag will be your badge of honor as you walk through your communities.”
That swag is a T-shirt or hat with a rat logo on it. But before they can get their hands on one, there are three things New Yorkers must do.
They must attend a two-hour New York City Health Department “rat academy” session that will give instructions on how to deal with rodents. They will need to participate in a rat-mitigation event and go out on a rat walk, hosted by Kathy Corradi, the city’s first “rat czar”.
A former elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, Corradi was appointed last year by the mayor. She coordinates with city government agencies, community organizations and the private sector to reduce the city’s rat population.
City officials are so determined to fight the rat population that they will host a “National Urban Rat Summit” Sept 18-19. It will bring together researchers at academic institutions and municipal pest-control managers from Boston, New Orleans and Seattle. They will share best practices on rodent mitigation and the science of urban rat management.
“New Yorkers may not know this about me — but I hate rats, and I’m confident most of our city’s residents do as well,” Adams said in announcing the summit. “The best way to defeat our enemy is to know our enemy. That’s why we’re holding this inaugural summit to bring experts and leaders from across the country together to better understand urban rats and how to manage their populations.”
Reaction from some city residents to the Rat Pack and the new garbage bins ranged from “at least it’s an effort” to “it’s a waste of time” and “only in New York, a rat patrol”.
“It all sounds like a good cause, because there is a lot of trash in New York, like nobody cares,” Anaiyah Glover, a resident of the Bronx, told China Daily. “I’ve seen thousands, thousands [of rats],” she said. “They have run at me, straight on. It was scary.”
She recalled when a “big fat one” ran toward her. She moved to the side of the street and jumped over the “baby melon big” rat. “It was really fat, like, he ate a lot,” she said.
Maura, who asked that her last name not be used, lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband and teenage son. One evening, back when her son was a toddler, she said she took him inside their building lobby and then came back out for his stroller. “There was a rat in it,” she said. Her son had followed her: “‘It’s so cute,’ he said as I screamed.”