By Scott Etkin
On a cold but sunny Wednesday afternoon in March, Straus Park on Broadway between West 106th and 107th streets is a nice spot to stop and linger. It has benches, greenery, and lots of carryout food stores nearby.
The things that make it a nice spot to linger, though, also make Straus Park “a perfect storm of rat activity.”
That description comes from Caroline Bragdon, director of neighborhood interventions, pest control services at the city’s Department of Health, who led a walking seminar on rats and rat prevention on Wednesday that began in Straus Park.
Bragdon has been with the Department of Health for 25 years, and hearing her speak about rats brings to mind Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. From her descriptions of rat life, a reasonable goal for the city is mitigation, but not eradication.
For starters, rats are incredibly scrappy – they can live on just an ounce of food a day and can squeeze their furry bodies through a hole the size of a quarter. They live underground, often burrowing into the soil of parks and tree pits. If you destroy their nest, they will simply make another one elsewhere.
Worst of all, for New Yorkers: they are prolific. A healthy rat can have 12 pups approximately every month. So even though the average city rat only lives for a year (hawks are their natural predators in NYC, but Bragdon says rats are more likely to meet their maker by way of an oncoming car), that still leaves plenty of time to create a big family tree.
So, what can we do?
Bragdon stresses the importance of limiting their food sources. Rats have a strong sense of smell and can easily find food if it’s left out in a bin without a lid. Throwing away food scraps in lidded containers – such as compost bins – and keeping garbage areas clean is the primary defense against rats. “That’s rat prevention in New York,” she said.
Also: rats are great at finding food in unlikely places. The most disgusting fact Bragdon shared on the rat tour is that rats can feed on the undigested food found in dog poop left on the street – yet another reason to pick up after your dog.
Most of the time, though, food is not that hard for rats to find. Feeding pigeons and other wildlife in the city is “always a bad idea” says Bragdon, both because the food is often unhealthy for the intended animals, and because it attracts unintended ones – i.e., rats.
Keeping infrastructure maintained is another key step in rat prevention. Rats can make homes in cracks in the pavement and find their way into buildings through small holes in the steps or siding.
On the list of rat-fighting tactics, using rat poison is low down – partly because it’s often ineffective (rats often don’t take the bait) and partly because certain poisons can accumulate up the food chain. This is what likely killed Flaco, the owl that escaped the Central Park Zoo. Rat contraceptives are currently being trialed, but results are still uncertain.
If you see signs of rats – a three-inch diameter hole in a tree pit, droppings that look like raisins, gnaw marks on a garbage bin, for example – Bragdon recommends calling 311. That triggers an inspection by the Department of Health, the results of which can be monitored on the Rat Information Portal. The Parks Department handles tree pits and has ways to address a rat problem without harming the tree. Bragdon advises filling tree pits with gravel to make it harder for rats to create a nest. Using concrete will kill the tree.
New York City no longer has a “rat czar” – Kathleen Corradi stepped down last fall after more than two years on the job – but there are still ways for the public to get involved in the Department of Health’s rodent resistance. For example, the agency offers free rat academy trainings both online and in-person.
If you’ve read this far, you might be curious about the effect of trash containerization on rats. Last summer, the NYC Department of Sanitation reported promising early results from its use of Empire Bins in Morningside Heights and West Harlem, with rat sightings down 8% in the area.
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There are several people who routinely scatter bird feed in this and nearby areas. It’s a losing battle against the rats until they can be prevailed upon or somehow made to stop. A couple drives in at least once a week to dump bird feed at the corner of 110th and Broadway, in front of the H-Mart. They have been asked many times to stop and they refuse. They don’t live in the area so don’t have to deal with the consequences of their actions.
Just curious, but who asked them to stop, and if it’s being done on a regular basis did anyone get the license plate number, and is it being reported to the city?
Please clean all the garbage and trash in front of every building and sidewalk. There is a mess under the snow. The Broadway islands are loaded with trash and boxes.
I didn’t think that was a secret, but OK.
I will repeat this one more time for those in the cheap seats. The best way to eliminate rats, particularly on residential streets, is composting.
Before my block went full-on composting, I would come home at night and see at least half a dozen rats skittering between the street, hiding places – and garbage bags on the sidewalk. And we had rats living in at least half of our tree pits.
When my block (a very savvy, “cohesive” one) went full-on composting – with virtually every building complying with it , from townhouses to large apartment buildings – it took about a year or so (possibly less), but the rats pretty much disappeared. I see none when I come home late at night. and they have even left the tree pits for “greener” pastures.
I simply cannot stress enough how well composting works to decrease or eliminate the rat population on a given street. And my street is proof that it absolutely, unquestionably works.
But, as others have noted, it takes a concerted effort by both landlords and (particularly) tenants for composting to be helpful in this regard – something which is, sadly, not as easy to do as one would like, particularly given lazy tenants who simply refuse to compost (and then complain about the rats) and the occasional landlord unwilling to comply with the composting laws.
Reversing the old expression, “If you build it, they will come,” I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that, “if you compost, they (the rats) will go.”
Tell the idiots to STOP FEEDING THE PIGEONS!! Rats feast on them.