That Darn Rat

For the Chinese, the Year of the Rat brings 12 months of prosperity. Anyone born under the sign is known as generous, amiable, and as a person who plays fair. But for New Yorkers, the word "rat" has an entirely different meaning: Rat are anything but generous or amiable, and they certainly don't play fair. Rats are worse than all the pigeon crap in Times Square put together. New York City is bleeding with the creepers, and for the past year the government has been saying, "Kill, kill, kill" when it comes to the city's estimated 28 million underworld rodent neighbors.

The city is doling out a whopping eight million dollars for a three-phase program called the "Comprehensive Rodent Control Initiative." The program, which started last August, encompasses 12 government agencies — a U.N. of sorts — including the Department of Health and the New York City Housing Authority. This all-out war on rats is being raged on 69 15-block areas of the Big Apple, which encompasses 32 community districts in the five boroughs.

"So far, the results have been positive," assures Health Department spokesman John Gadd. "It's a quality of life issue."

Officials are handing out violation notices to guilty landlords who are supposed to clean their filthy buildings; and if they don't get in gear, the city will make the improvements and bounce the bill back to the rat-draft dodgers. These rat terminators mean business: they're armed with four kinds of poison, three blood thinners, and one calcifier. Gadd stresses that the plan doesn't aim to get rid of the animals totally; the object is to bring their number down. But with female rats having anywhere from 42 to 154 babies a year, it's hard to tell if the two-year program will have permanent results. After all, with a million female rats left after the program, multiplied by an average of, oh, let's say 42 babies each...well, back to square one.

New York City is enlisting its residents to help out, informing them about everything from washing their babies' faces at night (to rid the milky smell that rats mistake for food) to simply "knowing the enemy." The filthy four-legged foes can grow up to 19 inches long with tails that stretch eight inches. They can live through a six-story fall, survive in a flooded sewer for four days, and gnaw through practically anything, including metal.

Despite the fact that New Yorkers are going all out to control the wrath of the rat, it turns out that the residents of the city are more likely to bite one another than encounter a rat nibble. The Daily News announced in 1996 there were 184 rat chomp allegations compared with 1,102 reported human bites that year. With that in mind, we offer this advice to flesh-hungry New Yorkers (who've had their proper rabies vaccinations): when a rat bites you or your property, bite back!

Phuong-Cac Nguyen