Learn to Live with Rats, Because You Already Do

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Learn to Live with Rats, Because You Already Do

Rats eat 42 billion tons of our food each year worldwide and cost the United States an estimated $19 billion annually. They have earned our fear but deserve our respect.

They will be around long after we're long gone. Photo via Shutterstock

When you've lived with rats as long as I have, you become paranoid. Every suspect sound and fleeting shadow could be a rat waiting to pounce. I moved out of my last apartment, in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, after it became infested with rats in the wake of Hurricane Sandy; the Gowanus Canal overflowed, which drove the rats farther inland. They invaded my garbage, gnawed on old pork chops, and left them to rot on the kitchen floor. I could hear the rats scurrying in the walls.

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When I moved, I thought I'd gotten away from them—but soon enough, construction began on my block, and they appeared once again. My roommates and I put out traps and poison, hired exterminators, and covered up holes with steel mesh. Still, they came (presumably through the basement, which was littered with rat shit).

We couldn't leave food out on the counter—or anywhere, really. I once foolishly placed an entire loaf of sliced bread on top of my refrigerator. The next morning, I found the bag empty, gnawed and discarded in the laundry room. The rats also figured out how to open our trash can, which has a locking lid. Once, we placed a pile of magazines on top of the can to keep them out; I later walked into the kitchen to find a rat hanging from the lid with his two front claws chewing furiously on the can's plastic exterior—very pliable to a rat's teeth, which are as strong as steel. (Fun fact: A rat's jaws wield an impressive biting force of about 7,000 pounds per square inch.)

So I have very few reasons to like rats. But the other day, I was typing away at my desk when a rat materialized on the hardwood floor of my bedroom. It ran under a chest of drawers, cornering itself. I grabbed a few loose coins and tossed them at him, hoping he'd run out—but he continued to hide. Eventually, I walked over and kicked the drawer repeatedly, hoping he'd get the idea. He ran out and flew up a flight of stairs. Since that fateful morning, I've learned more about rats and developed a begrudging respect for them. I've come to accept that we live alongside one another. I'm no longer at war with them, and that's a good thing, because rats are inescapable. They exist in staggering numbers, and they'll be here long after we're all gone.

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There are around 2 million rats in New York City. Even if you never see them, the evidence of their presence surrounds us. They descend over parks at night like "one big shadow," according to one exterminator in this New Yorker story.

They are remarkably resilient, virtually indestructible, and built to survive. Rats have lived through nuclear testing and can swim underwater; an exterminator once told me they can hold their breath for up to four minutes, which is how they make their way into toilet bowls. Norwegian rats, NYC's only existent species, are basically built to eat and multiply. According to Robert Sullivan's Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, spotting one at night means about ten are nearby. "One pair of rats," Sullivan writes, "has the potential of 15,000 descendants in a year."

I've since learned that the reason the rat came into my room that day was either because its nest was disturbed, or it simply couldn't cut it in the hunt with the other rats at night. Rats are nocturnal, so if you see one during daylight hours, it's because it's been out-competed and has no choice but to brave the elements in the sun. "If humans can't make it with one job, they get another one to pay the bills," another exterminator told me. "If there's not enough food, they'll come out in the daytime looking for it—they have no choice."

Rats thrive around humans because we produce so much garbage. While rats may be getting rid of our waste, they also create their own, spreading their urine and feces all over the place. The economic cost of damage from rats in the United States is, according to estimates, $19 billion a year—"many times greater than any other invasive animal species."

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Each year rats eat 42 billion tons of our food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide.

In 1982, the United Nations estimated that rats ate more than 42 billion tons of food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide. Rats are such a prevalent part of the food supply throughout the world that many governments put acceptable limits on how much rat contamination they deem to be safe, according to the book Rat: How the World's Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top.Rats author Jerry Langton reminds us that the US Food and Drug Administration allows an average of two rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter, and that the World Health Organization estimates that as much as 35 percent of all food consumed by humans has been contaminated by rodents—mostly, by rats.

It's not just our food that rats have developed a taste for, Langton writes; they're fond of the insulation that covers our electrical wires as well. Insurers and fire-safety groups estimate rats are responsible for as much as 25 percent of unintentional fires.

When you look at rats from a purely biological standpoint, though, there is much to admire. "They certainly have their place in the ecosystem," Ronald J Sarno, an associate professor of biology at Hofstra University who specializes in urban rat research, told me. According to Sarno, rats are most useful—for humans, at least—in laboratory studies, providing insights into health and genetics and behavior. "I realize they're vilified by the media, but they're pretty amazing animals, biologically. They're amazingly adaptable."

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Bobby Corrigan, one of the world's leading experts on rodent control and a preeminent urban rodentologist (his nickname among colleagues at his rodent consulting firm is the "Rat Czar"), told me while expressing his respect for the animals that he doesn't believe rats should live in cities due to their dangerous and destructive nature.

"The average rat you see scurrying around the curb at night—what benefit is he bringing to New Yorkers?" Corrigan asked. "In the city, it's only a threat."

Outside the city, however, rats (and mice) are of some ecological benefit. Corrigan said that they distribute all kinds of plants through seed dissemination, and they also construct burrows in the ground, which aerates the ground and benefits the soil's ecology. Rats and mice are also a critically important part of the food chain, a key source of protein and nutrients for foxes, coyotes, wolves, dogs, hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, and other animals.

Rodents make up 44 percent of the world's mammal population, Corrigan told me, while humans make up about 5 percent. "In terms of true success, " Corrigan said, "really the rodents have it all over everybody else."

And for some reason, I'm more at peace with that idea than I ever have been.

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