New York City Escalates the War on Rats Once Again

Rats on the trackbed at the Union Square subway station in Manhattan this month. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

For centuries, New York City’s white whale has been the common rat.

Traps have been set and poisons brewed, to little apparent effect. Emergency conclaves have been called at City Hall.

There have been 109 mayors of New York and, it seems, nearly as many mayoral plans to snuff out the scourge. Their collective record is approximately 0-108.

“Just follow the numbers,” said Joseph J. Lhota, once the designated “rat czar” as a deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani. “Anybody who’s in charge of eradicating rats in New York knows exactly what Sisyphus felt like.”

Yet across the city, a new administration is betting that New York — long the Chicago Cubs of rodent control — might just be due. The city budget, agreed upon this week, includes $2.9 million in rat plan money. Mayor Bill de Blasio described the animals, with a touch of swagger, as “one New York City institution that we’re happy to get rid of.”

Along avenue medians and inside tree pits, beneath sewer grates and deep in the thickets of park foliage, the city’s vermin vision is taking hold...Continue reading...