New York City's unending war on rats has a new commanding general.
Mayor Eric Adams announced this week that Kathleen Corradi, an education department employee, had been appointed New York’s first “rat czar”, part of Adams’s effort to combat a growing rodent population in the county’s most populous city.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of me ‒ and a lot less rats,” Corradi, whose official title is “citywide director of rodent mitigation”, said at a news conference. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
Adams, who has often expressed a deep hatred for rats, advertised the job last year, seeking someone “somewhat bloodthirsty” with a “general aura of badassery” and offering an annual salary $120 000 to $170 000.
Corradi, a former teacher, is not new to the fight against rats. She previously oversaw rat mitigation efforts in the city’s public schools.
Rat sightings have jumped in recent years, according to city data. Some officials have said the proliferation of pavement dining – a concession to the Covid-19 pandemic that shut down the city’s restaurants – contributed to the problem.
The size of the city’s rat population is unknown. A 2014 study put the figure at about 2 million, or one for every four residents.
Adams has implemented other measures aimed at what he called New York’s “No 1 enemy”.
In recent months, his administration has limited the number of hours that refuse bags can sit on pavements awaiting pick-up and launched a pavement composting programme intended to reduce food waste.
But the brown rat, which probably arrived in New York sometime during the American Revolutionary War, 1775 – 1783, has proven a crafty adversary, thriving despite numerous attempts to eradicate it from the city’s warrens of subway tunnels and alleyways. - Reuters
The Independent on Saturday