You can't even blame the rodents at this point.
By Rollin Hu Editorial Assistant |
The trash bags rustle on a windless night. Something furry flashes around the corner, trailed by the wiggle of a tail. "They're as big as cats," a neighbor will say. "They're just so disgusting," another may add. Sometimes, there's only a human shriek. |
New York City sets a particularly high bar for rat vilification. Mayor Eric Adams has found a unifying cause in the pursuit of state-sanctioned rodent eradication. Some of the most memorable moments of his muddled administration have featured impassioned anti-rat declarations. "The rats don't run this city. We do." — a viral line from the city's sanitation commissioner — now adorns T-shirts, which the city once sold for about $50 each. |
Rats live rent-free in city dwellers' minds. But what do rats think of all this human hatred? Who speaks for the rats? |
Jason Munshi-South is a professor of biology at Fordham University. He cannot speak to rats, but he's spent over a decade studying the way New York City rats live. In a guest essay for Times Opinion, he evaluates the many ways that humans have tried to manage rat populations. He argues that some methods — especially the most brutal ones — aren't actually effective. "Trapping and poisoning are simply no match for the biology and math of rat reproduction," he writes. |
The solution to handling our rat problems begins with handling some of our own. In New York especially, trash bags pile up on the sidewalks, as does loose trash itself. "An adult rat," Munshi-South writes, "can be healthy and reproducing with just an ounce of food gleaned daily from greasy wrappers, napkins or food containers." You almost have to admire their resilience. |
The city government has already begun stepping up its trash collection under its appointed rat czar. But as Munshi-South puts it, "Government programs and other top-down initiatives can do only so much." The first step to ending this forever war on rats begins with all of us keeping trash off the streets. |
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