- US Alert in the United States: rats have started a cannibal guerrilla due to lack of waste
New York City announced Wednesday the appointment of its first "rodent reduction program director," a city department dedicated to killing millions of rats in the U.S. city.
Kathleen Corradi's appointment comes four months after the city posted a job ad saying it was looking for a "bloodthirsty" leader.
According to an urban legend, in New York there are as many rats as inhabitants: almost nine million. The famous English novelist Charles Dickens complained about it when he visited the city in 1842.
It is common to see rodents in the streets, on the subway platforms or in the bins of the "city that never sleeps". In fact, one rat became popular on the internet in 2015 when a video showed her running down the stairs of a subway station with an entire slice of pizza in her mouth.
"New York may be famous for the 'Pizza Rat,' but rats and the conditions that aid their spread are no longer going to be tolerated — no more dirty sidewalks, abandoned spaces or burrows," Kathleen Corradi said in a statement.
The former professor and waste management expert will be paid $155,000 a year, according to the New York Times. When the job posting was posted, Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who wants to fight the city's pests, said, "There's nothing I hate more than rats."
The "ideal candidate" for the job offer had to be "ultra-motivated, quite bloodthirsty and determined to study all solutions from various angles", but also have "determination and killer instinct" for the "large-scale killing" of plagues.
The city, which invests millions of dollars in this matter, regularly tests new techniques to eradicate rats, such as dry ice or alcohol baths. And a Manhattan neighborhood association, called R.A.T.S, regularly organizes raids with their dogs to kill as many rats as possible.
- United States
- New York
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Learn more