• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

New York City on pace to set new yearly record for rat call complaints

Status
Not open for further replies.
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
http://www.syracuse.com/state/index...seen_rats_walking_upright_saying_good_mo.html

NEW YORK — To many in New York City, the rats are winning.

The city's complaint hotline is on pace for a record year of rat calls, exceeding the more than 24,000 over each of the last two years. Blistering audits have faulted efforts to fight what one official called a "rat crisis." And even jaded New Yorkers were both disgusted and a little impressed by "Pizza Rat," the plucky rodent in a recent viral YouTube clip seen dragging a large cheese slice down a subway stairwell.

Nora Prentice, who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, has repeatedly complained to the city about a colony of about 200 rats in a neighborhood park.

"It's like the Burning Man of rats," she said. "They're just sitting there in a lawn chair waiting for you. I don't know what the city can do about this rat condominium. It's really gross."

Prentice said that she avoids the area because of the rats and that complaints she filed with the city were closed after officials told her they were "working on the problem."

"It means you can't lay down and relax in that park," she said. "What kind of an answer is this?"

Such gripes have found an advocate in Comptroller Scott Stringer, the city's top financial officer, who has taken on the self-appointed role of rat czar. In separate audits over the past two years, he has criticized the city's health department for not responding quickly enough to rat complaints, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways, for not cleaning stations more regularly. Such breakdowns, he says, have allowed rats to thrive.

"I've seen rats walking upright, saying, 'Good morning, Mr. Comptroller,'" he said. "It's unsightly to see rats running through neighborhoods like they actually bought a co-op somewhere."

New York officials who have been fighting the battle for decades say rising complaint numbers don't mean there are more rats, and they argue the rat population has actually been holding steady the past few years.

A Columbia University doctoral student using statistical analysis last year estimated the number of rats in the city at 2 million, claiming to debunk a popular theory that there is one rat for each of the city's 8.4 million people. But scientists and city officials say it's impossible to accurately estimate the number.

"There's no way to do that," said Caroline Bragdon, a city's health department scientist and resident rat expert. Scientists can estimate the number of rats in a fixed area, like a park, by counting burrows and multiplying it by 10, but larger estimates are just not accurate, she said.

The spike in complaints of rat sightings and conditions attracting rodents is probably because garbage was left festering on sidewalks during last winter's large snowfalls, and registering complaints is easier now with the city's 311 complaint line smartphone app, Bragdon said.

Bragdon's team responds to such complaints, compiles a citywide "rat index" and inspects dozens of buildings each month. What started as a team of less than a dozen has now expanded to nearly 50 people, working with a nearly $3 million annual budget to implement the latest push to control rodents.
Click to expand...

Mayor Bill de Blasio's new "rat reservoir" plan targets communities with the highest number of rat complaints and seeks to dismantle habitats and food sources. That effort includes setting traps, installing rodent-resistant trash cans and working on legislation that would require restaurants to hose away sludge from dripping garbage.

Every little bit helps, Bragdon said. Unlike the voracious Pizza Rat, she says, most rats need only an about an ounce of food and water daily to survive.

"It's an apple core, it's a piece of a hotdog, a couple of chips. It's the crumbs," she said. "You'd much rather prevent rats from being here than treat them with poison after they're here."

But not all new techniques have worked out.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an audit finding little tangible success from a pilot program by the MTA to rid the subways of rats by removing trash cans from some stations, forcing riders to go above ground to throw away their garbage. The audit said the MTA had mostly selected stations with low rodent sightings to begin with, so it was hard to gauge any reduction.

There are a lot of rats, especially at night," subway rider Yessenia Alvarez said as she waited on a platform in Harlem. "When they come out, it's like they're everywhere."

City health inspectors regularly scour the city, poking into sewer grates and crawling under park foliage, searching for the signs many would never notice: tiny mounds of dirt that lead to an underground rat burrow, streaks in walls about an inch off the ground left by greasy fur, or tiny holes the critters can crawl through.

"Here's a big burrow, and it's fresh," Bragdon said during a recent inspection of a small park in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood, notorious for its rat problem.

As she pointed to the hole, a furry little head popped out, revealing one of the newest generation of New York City rats.

Bragdon greeted it: "Hi, mister."
Click to expand...

Obligatory:

kTKVmAw.gif
 
R

Reset

Member
They should start putting out glue traps around the city and the city should give everyone a stick. The rat problem will be solved.
 
Lamel

Lamel

Banned
Machina said:
Oh yeah, by merely dragging a piece of pizza that nobody wanted down a stairwell and having some tool film it with his phone, he has doomed his species to a city wide genocide that will cost billions of rat lives.

Rats.png
Click to expand...
fuck you, got mine
 
S

Saint Gregory

Member
I'm sure that they're talking mostly about Manhattan here but it was pretty crazy in Downtown Brooklyn when I was up there last month. Rats literally running the streets like they owned them.

I can honestly say while growing up in Brooklyn I never saw a rat above ground (they were kind of deep in the subway) until I went back as an adult so the problem does seem like it's getting worse.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
So is there a further evolution to a Rat King?

Rat -> Rat King -> ???

Rat God maybe?

Oh probably don't google Rat King if you don't like Rats
 
T

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
BkzUzi said:
They should start putting out glue traps around the city and the city should give everyone a stick. The rat problem will be solved.
Click to expand...

Whacking Day?
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Bring in a ton of stray cats to eat the rats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray dogs to eat the cats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray bears to eat the dogs

then when they are done, bring in a bunch of... what eats bears?
 
T

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
XiaNaphryz said:
They need to deploy hawks. There was a vid of a hawk who caught and ate a rat on top of a car in NYC.
Click to expand...

They're weak to pollution doe.
 
A

AyaisMUsikWhore

Member
Pizza rat is living in NYC in a nutshell.

Everyone is fighting for scraps just to live.

What an iconic rat. Historical and very inspirational all at the same time.
 
S

Spinifex

Member
Krejlooc said:
Bring in a ton of stray cats to eat the rats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray dogs to eat the cats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray bears to eat the dogs

then when they are done, bring in a bunch of... what eats bears?
Click to expand...

Bears will freeze to death in winter.
 
D

~Devil Trigger~

In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
look, Rats have rights too man

Everytime I take the Subway and I see one or two, I feel the diversity of NYC ALIVE!!!
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
Krejlooc said:
Bring in a ton of stray cats to eat the rats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray dogs to eat the cats

then, when they are done, bring in a bunch of stray bears to eat the dogs

then when they are done, bring in a bunch of... what eats bears?
Click to expand...

When in doubt on municipal animal issues always defer to the simpsons

The town gets overrun with Bolivian tree lizards:
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Click to expand...

Unforutnately I cannot find a gif or youtube clip that adequately covers this quote :(
 
G

GrotesqueBeauty

Banned
Having visited my sister in New York I have a potential idea, like, oh, I don't know USING TRASH CONTAINERS instead of HAVING GIANT PILES OF UNCONTAINED TRASH BAGS EVERYWHERE?

A radical approach to be sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. But seriously, wtf is up with the policy debates and head scratching on this issue. New York City has an abysmal waste collection policy, is it any wonder that rats are in fucking paradise there? Not that proper bins and dumpsters would eradicate the problem, but Jesus fuck, could there be a more ass backwards way to handle trash than what the city currently does?
 
G

Gallbaro

Banned
GrotesqueBeauty said:
Having visited my sister in New York I have a potential idea, like, oh, I don't know USING TRASH CONTAINERS instead of HAVING GIANT PILES OF UNCONTAINED TRASH BAGS EVERYWHERE?

A radical approach to be sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. But seriously, wtf is up with the policy debates and head scratching on this issue. New York City has an abysmal waste collection policy, is it any wonder that rats are in fucking paradise there? Not that proper bins and dumpsters would eradicate the problem, but Jesus fuck, could there be a more ass backwards way to handle trash than what the city currently does?
Click to expand...

You know what is up! But this won't change because of union work rules.
 
N

njr

Member
GrotesqueBeauty said:
Having visited my sister in New York I have a potential idea, like, oh, I don't know USING TRASH CONTAINERS instead of HAVING GIANT PILES OF UNCONTAINED TRASH BAGS EVERYWHERE?

A radical approach to be sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. But seriously, wtf is up with the policy debates and head scratching on this issue. New York City has an abysmal waste collection policy, is it any wonder that rats are in fucking paradise there? Not that proper bins and dumpsters would eradicate the problem, but Jesus fuck, could there be a more ass backwards way to handle trash than what the city currently does?
Click to expand...

Some corners do have containers now, especially in Times Square. It's much cleaner now, but there's still plenty of places that need to be replaced.
 
G

Gallbaro

Banned
njr said:
Some corners do have containers now, especially in Times Square. It's much cleaner now, but there's still plenty of places that need to be replaced.
Click to expand...

He is talking about public dumpsters. Where parking spots are reserved for public utility dumpsters to hygienic trash control, rather than the NYC method of residential buildings dumping bags on the sidewalk.

013834a8ece27c0013ec26457fc63e0f.jpg
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

[SF Chronicle] San Francisco declares state of emergency over monkeypox
News Event
22
3K
Drew1440 replied
  • Locked
Kotaku: Sony's Concord might be the biggest entertainment failure of all time, so why wasn't it news?
2 3 4
183
9K
Syphon Filter replied
My wife just got offered a job that force us to move to a place that is half the size of our current place, but our income would go up by a lot.
47
5K
SiteSeer replied
PCMAG's 60 Best Work-From-Home Cities
Social
5
7K
p_xavier replied
Teacher deaths raise alarms as new school year begins
News
26
2K
Leopold replied
Top Bottom