801: Must Be Rats on the Brain
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W, B, C, chicago, this american life. Good morning. And it's a great morning for new yorkers and a great morning to be in new york city work in April last year.

There are two undisputed truths about the Adams administration. Mere erik Adams loves his mother mare eric Adams hate rax. This event was to injustice new yorker s to the brand new rear.

This is the position the area created, that is, job listing called for candidates who were, quote, highly motivated and somewhat lood thirsty. But the swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor and general are of bad ashery h right? New york's mayor is not popular, is got huge disapproval ratings on crime, homelessness.

Only a fourth of all new yorkers, like the way is doing this job. So when the mayor talks rats, it's with the joy of a dad whose kids don't want any other dinner cooked them. Finally, I deserve because to hand the massive hard for sundays, because people stop me and saying, you know, with with you and we hate those down rate and you know memory more.

When I came out, that red device, you know, had a red device we caught ninety six rs around rookley um borrow hl ninety six rats and you know there were people that were yelling, you know, all you mother, you moderate 一楼 this is the kind of cut through swagger in a lot of the reMarks this day because the posting is a table with all kinds of ear for shooting， poisoning and trapping rats. Soon the new rats are cathedral, takes the stage, and the singers could kill roden as well. New york and good hand, you'll be seeing a .

lot of me and a lot less rax. There's a new sheriff in town.

and with your help, we'll send those rats packing. Fully keeping with the getting mood of the day, the red star's parents are there, filling for reporters and telling the three of how, at ten, the daughter mobilized our entire neighborhood to fight rats and so, so proud they can't stop themselves from talking over each other in a gush of words I be honest with. There was so many applicants, but when to get down, got to show smart SHE. Super .

smart. She's great with her a job. Do a great job.

The mayors made a very clear his stance on rats. He hate rats. I hate rats. All new workers hate raps.

wow. That is strong too. Not true. Everybody know he rats.

okay. So we are gonna vote our program today to rats and their hold of our cities and our minds. And for some equal time without was very important to cohoes today's coverage. We thought we would reach out to the one group that did not get a turn to the mike and the mayors press conference bucking you guys. Me push this my go to there on.

The already one, two, one, two.

are you want to introduce ourselves?

alright. So we are rode with the road class. We are rats because you like.

what do you make a this, a press conference. And the mayor pointing a rat zar and announcing, I rat is his mission. He's gna kill rats.

You know, look, I had made the same budget cuts to that guy was pigeon. I'd also be trying to a little of smoking Myers .

in the same.

yeah.

Actually, the numbers are interesting, is actually a real question. Nobody knows how many rats are in new york city is eight million people. But since you guys are like nesting everywhere under the streets and cyber x and during ancient water pipes and utility pipes and sores and subway, to us, like the best guess, like we could find from anybody, is just millions of rates that all they can say.

million so far, we're grown every day.

Actually, that's true. People are saying a lot more rotten. In new york, health inspectors are seeing twice as many rats. This is not just a few years ago.

and that's want to see two, just female. Let's go.

Can I ask you, do you do you see anything in the other size arguments? Do you see anything and why people find you to be a past and frightening.

right, once again?

Well, actually, the last year that we have starts for a .

hundred new yorkers got bit. It's not that how many new york is a year? Good step.

You know, how many new york is a year? Get hit by how many rest control red Prices in new york? Very few keeping tt afford.

how? Oh, nice eve. yeah. Let me give you .

guys the human point of you on this. Okay, in this new battle that's going on in new york, betwen, a growing rap population and a mayor calling for your blood, let me tell you about somebody who's on the front lines of where the new wave of rat has shown up. And he was darnse Foster.

He was just a couple blocks on the park with the mayor's press conference was held. And SHE saw the commotion and stop to watch and talk to my coat work of valley kippers total, that he lived on one hundred thirty eight street since the nineties. They never used every problem to the rats outside the building, rats in the base.

This is new. This is, I guess, nobody, everybody was looking at the other way. You're doing something else and the rats to go.

I it's very frustrating. Like harvest collection day is the absolute worse. There is really no safeway because they're running from garbage h garden garbage, garbage even in the middle ory. It's not safe because they darted so that you can barely walk and you just have the whole prae to god that they are not fair. Like, I shake my keys, I make as much noise.

So they were in.

I headed to her block on garbage pickup day and met up with turney before. Kids for school, which is a big Operation on our house, each for four kids, goes to a different school in a different part of the city. SHE lives on a really pretty blocking hard gum at all town houses and trees.

IT was a perfect spring morning. And as we strive there on the sidewalk, yes, even with the sunshine ing there in plain day, just right right. Yeah no, I just saw the right.

I don't know where I came from, but I crawled across the top of the Green. Can I know? Because I kind of froze.

Walk over to a big plastic trash bin and look inside. There's a rat chewing through a bag that sound with the rats. Denny says that it's not just a general kind of post pandemic surge.

It's LED to all the rats. On her particular blog, the neighbor od has been gentrifying. One has a couple doors down, so for two and a half million dollars, others are not far behind.

Dennis rents and one of the only apartment buildings on the blog, and he said her landlord trying to drive, but the out of a building to raise the rent, hot water and heat have gone out for weeks at the time. They don't fix anything. They harassing tenants.

They have managed to harassed and get half the building, so half of the tennis are gone. And rats are helping their cause because they just want to clear out my building anyway. So in new york city, rates are just a pon.

And the much bigger clash that is new york real state, we did reach out of the landward this name is how ask if he trying to drive out darkness and the of the last tenants in the building, something that the fester is part of that. But he didn't return our calls or text for our emails. I'm really stun.

I do not want my eller to win. Oh my god. Sorry, sorry.

I'm sorry.

That was the monkeys and ranger .

bye seemed to completely a nerve donnes and SHE urges me and her sons to move away from a stairwell where SHE seen rats, a certain spots where SHE doesn't like to stand. But our kids are totally enough c person's micham er in nine and twelve, both perfectly heavily to late for school or talk rates each year that we see like you whatever .

this one looks like a die.

Recently, the boy sped this one up the book, and your ballerina, wait, how can you tell? Because, like it's the body, eyes are still open. And like its body is like still kind, kinder.

Looks like it's strake playing dead. And because ants haven't warned that place. Yeah, I take a quick fiction.

Do you feel like the rats have gotten into your head? Oh yeah, no, I absolutely. I am thinking about them.

A and this is so strange, because they're so small, and yet they can, they can woom so large. They're a huge. These are .

not small. These.

these are big that just as they are eating good here, like i'm amazed at how how aggies they are. These, these a total needs. How a scientist I talk to said, the big problem with read these days is not that they spread. Disease, SHE said, is rare in north amErica for anybody to report catching a disease from rot, and is much more common for ATS to catch our diseases. From mos going to our stuff like new york rats got covered from us.

And the scientist told me that the bigger problem with rats is the very thing that dinner is experiencing, the stress feeling of everything being out of control, write there and IT just freaks people out like there's just something about having them around that just gets to a psychologically IT means that you've done something terribly wrong in your life. And you should correct IT if you're encountering rats like this, it's like a problem sign. It's like stop, change, do something different.

What do they in a program, rats and rats show up IT is all about the rats beginning of anything else. If you Better run with the rat, you pretty much remember the rest of your life today will let us, i've get transfixed. Why do they get to us so much that earlier, my coast for the hour, today, our region, Rachel, new york city rats, you guys have anything you want to say about Dennis, a situation you think she's wrong to be scared?

No, no, you know, he's, yes, it's scary. But you know what, I think the fact that will be in blamed for being in a bunch of beyond face, you know, is that right? When we happen, the room all lies on us, all lies. And you know, we're special bullers, right? You know, valid excuses for shining, sorry.

Rs, you may think you know them, you may think you nothing learn. We have stories today. I think we'll open your eyes, Steven.

Support for this american life comes from, indeed, people are driven by the search for Better. But when IT comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search, match with, indeed, use indeed, for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidate faster, get a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com, slash american terms and conditions, apply, need, the higher you need. Indeed, support for this american life comes from square space, the all in one website platform with features like square space payments and easier way to collect payments, so you can focus on growing your business, turn leads into client with proposals, estimates and contracts, and simplify your workflow and manage your services business on one platform. Had two square space 点 com slash american for ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain。

This american life today shows a rerun that we're bringing back right now because new york mar Adams is holding the very first national urban rat summit in three weeks in new york city. And we thought we could help everybody can get in the right at space for that. And we're going to start today's with the story that you guys commissioned .

as our costs today lie and is the right through. That's why we're hear to tell our story, which is why we get this next story for you at one beauty first. Rs, so this might be hard for some you close mind folks to believe, but you might be 不老 的 who love right， love us to death, who see you for we go to in the bear.

Actually, he's not with empty.

oh my god, copy that tomorrow. This we go to very own, the bigger I.

okay, I wanted start from the beginning you and I we met at a party, right? You came up to me and you basically did this thing where you like your woman, can I get your on something? Uh, and then you explained your predict. Will you explain for us now what's your current big dilemma?

Yes, I have several pet rats ah and I also uh am single and h used to be a very active dating uh in the dating scene and I want to either I have to either get rid of my rats so that I can start dying again or I guess become a weird, lovely right person for the rest of my life. I don't know if that's like IT seems like go to the two options and the fact that i'm waiting that decision is probably not a good thing. That should be a pretty easy choice. I would think that a couple years ago would have been an easy choice for me, but all the sudden it's not.

And at the party, you turn to me after explaining all of this, and you said, is me being iraq guy a deal break er and .

you Anthony ally said.

yes yes because it's not just that todd has rats that is named by the way, todd, he has twelve. They room free all day and they've taken over his living room where he set up an american gladiator style obstacle course with ropes for the rats to swing from furniture ure. If this were a disney movie, IT be magical. But if tadd were your tender date, you'd report his .

profile a little .

about todd. He's thirty nine, a writer living in a lay. He's tall, attractive, says he wants to find a real relationship and settle down according to his friends.

He's really broken up over this choice, constantly telling them he's going to get rid of the rats, but unable to pull the triggers. He's truly at a crossroads. Obviously, I have a strong bias for which road I think he should take.

The kind wrote that when you're walking of rat doesn't suddenly come screwing out, brushing against your feet. And the only thing I didn't understand, why was this so hard for him? Okay, so just help me walk me through IT. So how did IT start .

with threats? I think that the the rats, in a weird way, I think everybody has like at least one weird thing that they got into during the pandemic. For some people like kitting, or like, you know, where japanese TV show for me, IT was, you know, having a bunch of pet raps.

wait. So so I see. So basically you're saying this decision could only have happened during the pandemic.

one hundred percent before the pandemic. I was not a what you would call a rat person. I, I spent ten years living in new york. I thought rates were pets, not pets like they are like slightly above or below bed bugs, I guess unlike the new ork things you don't ever want in your apartment a list. Probably three weeks into the panda, into the the first lockdown, I was going on a walk.

And when I got home in the a parking lot to my apartment, there was the, I saw this little, tiny, cute little rat and he was crawling and he wasn't like scampering away. He was crawling in his back. Legs weren't working. He was kind of like dragging his body with his front. Little arms was like, IT, almost look like, like after saving private ryan, like, just like a wounded soldier trying to Carry himself to safety. And I felt so bad, I was like one of the other things that ever seen, combined with also being super like lonely and locked down and like just going on like a super inspective walking as like, i'm to say, this rat, i'm going to bringing this rat upstairs. I'm in a nurse of back to health.

Todd put on a pair gloves, picked up the rat, put IT in a box, did the ec. Dance, then went upstairs. The first thing happened .

is I called the humane society because I like, i'll take care this red until they can take him in thinking I would do that the next morning. And they were like, immediately though, the grow. And phones like, yes, we don't do anything with rats like I can call, i'm not control to get rid of IT if you want.

but we don't like, do anything for red. The humane society is like a, you know.

at least L. A. They are not very humane.

The woman was humane enough to give him the number of a rat rescue. He calls and talks to a woman named shannon who says she's love to take his rats, but you can't for ten days because she's at a town.

Just like, can you handle IT till then and keep? I was like, yeah, of course I can like knowing nothing about that. Anything like, awesome. We ve got a project. Now let's do IT.

Because of the pandemic, c tauta lost his job. He spent most days sitting at home with his wheels spinning. So project, keep rat a alive until shane gets home became his new focus.

Todd was in luck, though the rat he took home wasn't a street rap. IT was a discarded pet rap. Although the same species, the difference between street rats and pet rats is similar.

The wolves versus dogs still the first night to knock go well, todd was afraid of the rat and IT seemed afraid of him. IT escaped the cardboard box that was in multiple times, but quickly todd went from being grossed out to and gross heat. Google, why does my red do this and lose himself for hours reading all sorts of rap. Behavioral studies.

Also, every pet rat is different. So because like, they all have different personalities, much like people. And so like you are going like the rat redit or or read IT. IT is as it's called and like to like google .

or to look up like IT.

it's called red IT. They got a good one. They locked that done pretty good. IT was a real crash course into learning about everything about reds like you have to get IT a body basically like they hate being alone. They get lonely, depressed, uh and so like immediately I was like, okay, I ve got to get another rat for like ten days at this point was like eight um and so I went on crux list and started looking up like you know like red for sale so I found a guy who was selling rates for like three doors of piece and I went to that due house and he's like, okay here's the two rats I have which one you want and there's two voto cute rats and only little fish taking thing um and it's like I don't care like you know which which one do not want is like well doesn't matter to me and just going to feed the other one to my snake and I was like, well now i've don't want the other red blood on my hands like i'll just buy a boat so so at that point I had three rats uh and obviously uh very quickly I was becoming like a they were definite my best friends and my only friends because again I was locked down ah and so at the point this ladies shanon got back from visiting her family was ready to take the original rat in to a road and rescue um I no longer wanted to give him up uh and in fact he was not surprised at my rat culture had had already multiply three if you like that so what happens and was like no way like SHE literally says .

that what happens oh yeah he was laughing.

He was like that that literally every red owner like you start with one. And then of the sudden, I give a ton SHE .

tells him about another road and rescue where you can get even more rats. Todd says, I think i'm OK with three.

shane. Thanks a lot. I hang up the phone immediately. Go on instagram, look at the subway road rescue and later that day had had two more rats. I was up to five ah and i'm pretty sure I want to say later that we got to eight like if you give you at up all the rs i've had between the ones that have died and the ones that um got Foster, I I feel I have probably had like thirty five ATS at this point.

which is pretty insane. Thirty five ATS actually IT was thirty seven. There's claude perl, Arthur marsa, berty, Lucy Henry, bobbi seizure lonard all of a herria loop, a Manda, Julian, Roger, Ricky, bow panna py, sweet look, dave alonzo, ebi, zr, edi, beth span, osm o jay della cloud, eldest ir, elinor goody, Joshua heighty and Peter.

He didn't have them all at once. Rats only live a few years. So the most years ever had at one time was fourteen. When i've told friends about tod's rats, they've asked me, is he OK like, is he having a breakdown or anything? And the answer is emphatically no. He's fine, but he just lost his job and he was having a hard time getting motivated to find another one in the pandemic job market sides. How coody he was so busy falling in love with rats.

Icc rats as verman Carriers of disease, just thinking of them, skits me out, but todd says, I just don't know them. Like a proud parent, he told me things about rats that converted him. And I ve got to say, I actually had no idea how intelligent these animals could be, that part of what hook tadd, he observed.

Rats are like obsessed with what we know about what they know like. They never want us to know what they know. It's there's like the mind game level.

It's like CIA level. My games of, like, they want to make us, keep us in the dark about whatever information they have, or whatever they know how to do. So like very secretive. They love hiding stuff and cashing stuff, and everyone be caught doing .

anything naughty. Right in the beginning, todd would give us rats trees, which they'd take in stash, and hiding spots all over his apartment. Every night, he'd have to clean twenty to twenty five little stashes.

Todd started to get suspicious. He was giving them treats, but not this many treats. So we set up a goal proof facing the treat draw to find out what was happening. Sure enough, the rat had figured out how to open the treat draw by sending underneath IT and pushing IT open as a team. They're steal treats, then close its shot.

Todd immediately .

move the treats up to the middle w the next day he came into the kitchen, the middle draw was open and all the treats were gone. He reviewed the goal profit tage to try to figure out what happened.

Come to find out that they three of them, and figured out that if they wedge up so the oven is next to this cabinet, if they wedge themselves against the oven, they are little tiny fingers. They were able to kind of lake just wedge in between the draw and get IT out, just enough that then they could stick their face and use their face to watch out more. And then all the things they were able to climb into the middle or and start stealing food again. But then they have figured out that they can close the .

second tour because there's no way to .

push IT close. They've been closing. Now you, I don't know what little rat meeting they had, but they somehow came up with the idea that instead of getting caught with the second door open and they'd been stealing food, they would take all of the food and treats from the second dore and put IT back into the first dore, the bottom dore. So then, hopefully when I would find that, I would think that they were like helping me put IT back in the correct jar.

Todd opens the bottom jar, and the treats are all there.

Another thing I learn talking to taught about rats is that they can jump incredibly high like bunnies. Todd learn this when he set up his goal pro to figure out how is rats were getting into these high copies. The footage showed they were crawling onto the kitchen table and launching themselves four feet in the air.

Todd knows their secret, but they don't know. He knows. A few days later.

he wakes up. I walked into the living room and I saw claude, and he was running over to go do this. And then he's kind of stop and froze. He'd been posted doing something naughty.

And he walked up to the edge of the table, and I looked at them, and he kind of turned and looked at me, and he turned and look at the copies, and he turned and looked at me again. And then he jumped like straight up, just like a couple of, like the sad little jump up and just belly flap down to the ground. He essentially tried to trick me in the thinking that he could not make this jump, that, like, very easily could be done.

And I have seen them do now on camera many, many times. IT was like, that just happened. Like to this rat, just try to trick me in and thinking, he couldn't do something. I know you can do.

I talk to a road and behavior specialist about all of this. He says todd got IT mostly right. He wouldn't go so far as to say the rats were trying to trick tod, but he said that rats know what will or won't get them treats from their owner, and you'll behave accordingly.

What hard is reading is intent, is actually the nuance with which the rats can read the cuse he's giving. I was surprised when the rodent guy told me how perceptive they are. If you're stressed, iraq can smell back.

They also study your posture, the redefinition expressions. They can detect things about us that we can even see in each other. And they're social animals, if you like them, and aren't trying to kill them. They wanted play all day. They enjoy IT, which tadd noticed.

IT was nonstop entertainment. They are always up to something and also like, they're so loving, like they're just like there are one of the most like loving creatures you could ever have as a pt like they just like are obsessed .

with you it's like, way OK this is the side of rat I do not know about like no one talks about rat. They're so loving. So can you just stay like I need you to A I I needed to convince me that that's true, that's fair.

that's totally understandable. Um but as far like their loving nature is like they just like currently want to come cattle and kiss you and give you little legs and like this is so I fully admit that like I am like pretty far off the deepen until like pet rat ownership uh but there's still like another level that I haven't like sung to yet which is like a lot of people let their rats like clean their tea and stuff, which is like disgusting to me.

But rats love to grow you because that is like hugging, kissing. I think that I got a lot of books readers right now. They just always want to get my nose and try to like clean my boogers, which is like to stop. That is like, disgusting.

You have a line.

Oh yeah, I do. I do. I will not let them clean teeth or buggers or the ear thing is like, I don't want them crawling inside my ear.

But IT is really cute when they tried to because like you hear a little squeak and sniff, that's prety cute. But then once they start trying to get into your ear to clean ets, like, dude, stop like that. disgusting.

The idea of todd being groomed by rats brings me back to his predicament. When does the thought, okay, I need to get rid of these rats if I want to have love and a relationship. When does that occurred you?

yes. So for me I feel like um as the pandemic started kind of like actually winding down a bit, I think like post like the last variant, I felt like you know things were opening up again. People you know I was going to parties again for the first time in a while and like meeting people at parties and like I think I was at a friend's party um in the moment kind of occurred.

I was I met A A girl. This party we really hit off and we were flat and then uh we exchange numbers and then SHE, we kind of kept talking. And then he inquired about potentially getting a drink. So we had a drink at this party. And then as things were winding down and the bar was closing, uh, you know, I think like anybody, you found the old habits.

Like, okay, do you want to go back to my place? And she's like, yeah and like, I was like like a kiser salmon where all the in my house, oh my god, wait minute, I have at that point, twelve rats of my apartment had not even occurred to me. Like, I can bring this person home to apparent for the rats was like, the first thing that rushed me is like, how do I explain this to her to preface this before we go to my apartment? And like, very quick as like, there is no way to explain having twelve and apartment .

they were in his car on the way home taught, turns to the .

woman and says, actually, i'm really sorry. I like, i'm actually really, really tired and I early morning tomorrow like, and so like, this girl probably thought like I was like, you know, like not that enter her having second thoughts when in reality, because I don't want to expose her to a red field department.

he takes her back to her car and they never see each other again.

I really lying in bed that night like, well, this is probably the end of like, great ownership. Like if we're going to be like meeting people again, life is kind of starting to get back to Normal. This is not something that you can explain to somebody.

Todds tried to get rid of the rats, posted them online, but then every time he ends up backing out at the last minute, so much so that he's been banned from multiple online l rat groups.

Three and a half weeks ago, I had a woman who was coming to adapt them, who, like, I feel really bad. He drove all the way from simula. I, and like, a half hour before, I was like, i'm so sorry I can do.

It's like, I, I, I got to keep. I'm really, really sorry. I offered to like that water for but IT was like, no, I don't worry about IT whatever but yeah, there's it's really hard to give IT that i've tried quite a bit. It's it's tough.

Mean, I don't think you're gonna be able to do.

I know, but I have to do why?

Why do to? This is definitely .

not a sustainable way of living life.

Tod told me he was planning on getting rid of all of his rats within a month.

Okay, hi tot hi. So I has been four months since we last talked.

Been four months .

will minus like a few days.

I'm dying to know.

have you given away the rats?

I have not. I have, I feel like made some progress in that I have committed to not getting any more rats or any new rats um which I think is a big step, a first step um i'm down to three now unfortunately down, round, down the three rats yeah since I got most .

of them around the same time, many of them died around the same time. It's been hard. He's actively restraining himself when he has the urge .

to get more rats.

What was the closest he came?

A, like, A A week ago. Man, there was a really cute rava there. A, there was a rat like a week ago that was came from the same like bread as one of my favorite rat. My first red law that died that was just like, oh, use the cute ous and vessel rat and there was like a really cute video that one of the rodent rescue s posted and was like a production as, like, man four and that different than three. Maybe i'll just get like one more than like, see where echoes but he was a Young rat was like, if I get a fourth one that's Young, then i'm going have to get him a body when the other three die and the other two and like, you know where this goes from there like you're just like inspires .

out of control prety quickly. So why is he finally letting go of his rat? What changed?

After our first call, he started opening up to women on dating apps about his rat ownership. To his surprise, at least half were totally cool. With that, he even brought four dates home to meet the rats.

IT went great. This huge obstacle he'd invented, rats or love. IT wasn't actually a problem, which made him look at why I was so embarrassed about being a rat die in the first place.

But I think I was more embarrass and ashamed of being in general who I wasn't where I was at that point. Obviously, like the pandemic like that, just like everything that my identity was wrapped around had been paused like I I love those rates do not get me wrong and they are super fun.

Uh, but I think also, you know you could argue that I was using grand ownership as a way of avoiding addressing other problems in life uh because like that's like the double one me is like OK not pouring all this time into this weird hobby. That means I do have to put into you know getting my career back on track, addressing my personal life, addressing my love life and actually like taking those things serious. I know of this like great excuse anymore to avoid them.

todd taking steps to move towards a life without rats. He's taken down all the paintings and pictures the rats chewed the edges of and is replacing them with new art. The rats destroyed all his plants. He's buying new ones, and he's been going out on lots of dates. He feels hopeful about his new life, though he did say when he's out buying new plants, maybe he'll see a new rat .

and get that too.

Ella Baker, she's a producer on this show and a real one us back.

Up no country for old rats. We visit a vast place that has somehow gotten .

rid of rats a minute from chico dio. When our program continues.

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This american life from our glass, today's program must be rats on the brain my coast today, new york street rat .

raj and Rachel.

no, you guys welcome back to the second half. We've arrived at at two of our program at two, the big bag theory. So the mayor of new york and his new rats are, I have declare this renewed war on rats that we talked to back at the beginning of the show, this word that supposed we're going to be way more effective.

And we though, but one thing about the entire project that seems kind of absurd is that one big reason that there are so many rats in new york city is just obvious. It's completely out in the open. It's not complicated at all.

That's right. Is racism. Oh, no, i'm sorry. Don't it's past bag?

Yeah excuse me. Yeah, the basic bag. 谢谢。

好的， 谢。

Yeah, that's a thing. New york is put out the garbage in plastic bag. And if you've ever visited the city for more than a day, you've seen these on the sidewalk at night, just huge stacks of them just stretching down the block.

It's about eight million pounds of food waste every day. That's one pound for every man, woman, child and non binary person. And five birds. And this is also a lot of red food.

It's like a buffet on every black. And you say, oh, I need the buff food and .

is a very hard tearing into a plastic garbage bag.

no. Is IT hard to walk. Print taken? okay.

So why? why? Why, with the biggest city in the country decided to do something so absurd and counterproductive, one of our producers, express condos.

looked into that IT wasn't always this way. New yorkers used to take out their trash in Oscar, the ground style metal cans with tightly fitting lids. The cans were ubiquitous, mostly worked, but nobody like them. Here's how you used to have to take out the trash. You'd put your raw review in a medal.

Can a sane worker would drag IT to the back of the truck, banging IT loudly to empty IT out, where new yorkers, many without houses, were left to clean out their smelly metal cans? IT wasn't great. Then in the late sixties, the future arrived. AmErica put a man on the moon and .

here's the answer, folks. No glad trash banks, the older proof scanner proof so strong their league of at the end of trashy, treat me plastic .

trash bags or mass produced. For the first time, new york city mayor john linsey saw opportunity for an easy political win. He called the press conference on may eighth nineteen sixty nine, reporters gathered in the blue room at city hall, a garbage bag hung on the wall, and mayor linsey announced plans for a new experimental program that would allow new yorkers in half a dozen neighborhoods to drop trash bag directly on the curb overnight. The mayor said, want to see a paper and plastic garbage bags could reduce noise, older litter speed up garbage collection and improved conditions for sane workers. The siltation union was all in, but not everyone was so .

glad Bobby .

corgan remembers where he was these days. He's a world renowned ed road antolian st. For back then he was taking an intro to pest management class at Sunny farming bail. His professor asked the class to consider the mayor's recent announcement.

I remember him giving us a lesson about that event, and he said, I want you to write a homework lesson. What do you think this is going to do for the right population of the city to put trash in plastic bags? What will this do?

Even the students in pest control, one or one could tell what what .

happen the writing was on the wall, that if we do this, we're going to be literally as if I was a zoological garden. We're gonna try to grow these animals for some reason.

Bobbie thins back on this moment, often in the terminator version of this movie, which would be called x terminator, the human survivors of new rat city would send Bobby back to dive in front of the podium and knocked the bag out. A mayor linsey s. Hand.

if I was there that in the audience or any pest professional, we all would have went well, will stop. We have questions back here in the back row. Stop, stop my message. I would stood up and say, this is going to be a classical mistake in public health, and a classical mistake and quality of life. And IT needs to be stopped and rethink this whole thing with different approaches.

How pivotal was this moment in the history of the new york city rat population?

I think, I think he was everything. I think you put this animal into hyper drive.

He calls this the big bang theory or the big bag theory, because he is funny right before the bags in one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine, another respected road, intelligible names, joe Brooks, to the survey and found that rats were only in a eleven percent of new york. Now bobbi says rats are in eighty to ninety percent of the city.

So did anyone in charge see this coming? If a bunch of undergrads in an entry level past class could tell, couldn't the people running the city? Fortunately, one of the men who brought plastic bags to new york is still alive.

Jerry krochmal is now eighty eight. Back then, he was acting sAnitation commissioner. Jerry might be one of the last people left who can tell us definitively, did they have any idea that plastic bags would lead to red pocalypse .

in nineteen twenty one might just say, if somebody would show me a plastic bag, I would think that easy to film and easy to pick up. And if I easy to correct, those are the things that I would have thought about IT. I wouldn't have thought that rats could eat them, because that wasn't what I was concerned with. My concern is collecting the garbage.

Is that trade off worth IT? I don't .

office worth IT. My story is we gotta get the garbage collected rats.

We're not on jerious radar at all. He was busy removing millions of pounds of garbage from the city every day, which, by the way, is kind of a miracle in bags. They made that massive job faster, twenty percent faster, where the city saw efficiency. Big bag, saw dollar science bg makers, prime the public by donating six hundred thousand sex, and even got to help pick the guy who evaluated the pilot project at the initial press conference that I claimed the bags would reduce the smell so much that they wouldn't attract rats, which, as any new york ker who has walked past a pile of black bags backing under the hard son, can tell you, it's just a total lie in january one thousand nine hundred and seventy one, the city council unanimously voted to approve the use of plastic bags in all five burns of new york. Cans were out, bags were in, and the party began, oh, to be a new york city rat in the ninety seven days.

Fast forward to twenty twenty three.

I don't think you are going to find an administration that is more serious about a containers and placing our garbage and containers like we are.

That, of course, is mayor eric Adams. And the big thing here in his new rats are doing to take back the city from rats is to get trash bags back in trash cans. But Adams is putting millions of dollars into a new pilot that undoes mayor linsey. Pilot IT puts trash into sleep modern bins, its ambitious, bold. But who's why IT might not work?

The new .

containers need to be picked up more often, daily, or even twice a day. This would require hiring more sAnitary ation workers. And buying new special side loading trucks could cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade.

And then there's the parking spots. To make the plan work, the city would need to place the containers in one hundred and fifty thousand parking spots, up to twenty five percent of spots in some neighborhoods. So our new yorkers willing to give up their parking in order to beat back rats.

I don't want to give a principle, is hard enough to find a parkin spot.

You can get a spot as IT is around here, just when you come home at night. I got about, I rather get rid of the rat problem. That's much more important.

I mean, this is a walking city, so you know, it's easy. Give up the spots, give up the pots. Fifty thousand. Where they go to talk in jersey, you asking like a very too, very intense things in new york, finding a spot apart, but not one in problems. But alright, that is a hundred and fifty thousand .

got to make .

sacrifice IT.

But that means people got to spend more money going to like parking garage is, oh, that's I had to say, no.

I don't care at all. Like esn affect me. I don't think I care. I don't think I .

care whatsoever artifically me.

IT was mixed, pretty much split. Humans are a house divided, right? They're united. They know what they need to do. That's why they're winning.

Express karara is producer in our show this july, a european first round mad story mayor Adams york official plastic to replace plastic bags, every residential building in the city with fewer than ten departments will have to use them by twenty twenty six. He said that getting plastics bags off the street is the key to reducing the cd's rap popular.

A tree, Alberto, more like alloa. A lot of reads I dearly.

Everywhere there are people, there are rats. They thrive living off our agriculture and our garbage.

They volatile. Whatever we've settled and he's the main charter.

So you think is more of a partnership?

absolutely.

What i'm just saying that, that as people spread on the go like like rats, most of the rats across new york and across america, they started in .

china and mongolia, right? Mongolia ur eeo pean.

That's actually the truth. And if you want to find places where aren't right, you basically have to go to places where there aren't no people like an arctic a, there are islands here in there. But there is one big exception to all this.

The largest place of human habitation, whether are no rats, have bert canada, Albert canada is province uh of canada. Referees of california and organ combined is bigger than france. And it's not something that humans elsewhere have failed that completely. They have no rats. How's that possible?

How do they do IT? We are a couple miles west of the saskatoon border. It's going to like the front line, I guess, and there's no doubt that's where the red show up.

I'm writing with the Alberta countryside with right inspector joy, half man, it's Green and mostly flat open space that to an american like me and western farm after farm the towns near the border, tiny gears, twenty nine straight talking guy who volunteers at the fire department and small town events and A T shirt, genes and baseball cap, is the kind .

of work are uncomplicated. I my job, I like doors, so spray weeds. Go look for .

rats up new .

every day. I'm about everyday farm mercial. I enjoy IT red hunting is just .

five weeks in the spring and fall for him. And he's not doing that. He's working. The farmers families had for five generations near here.

He knows most of the farmers here on the border also, when the truck is Carry with person who runs Alberta's control program, he explains that Alberta's campaign against ads began decades ago. If you picture for a second, okay, rats arrival the east coast of north america, and then slow spread west across the continent. And in counter, what that means is the informal quebec province. Then they move west to ontario province, the manta proms parents, they reach the schedule. And province, surprisingly not that long, go around thousand and twenty.

And I took them thirty years to move across the province to get to the actually born. And essentially we saw the rats coming, and so we're able to mobilize and be ready for when they arrived.

That became in one hundred and fifty people in Albert across the border, to sketchy and saw the rats were involving farms and eating crops. Albert is a big agricultural province. And Alberta in were like, nope, we don't want the reads.

And therefore they were declared a pest so that every Albert was responsible for controlling them. And they actively went out and educated people as well, because people didn't know what rats look like. They had rats tax deid and put in all the local agricultural field offices just so that they could see what a rat actually look like.

The asset is decided to set up a rat control zone, kind of A D M Z, for rats, where they catch the woman trying to infiltrate the pristine province to ravage their crops. The same runs along the order with sketch an north to south, over three hundred miles, eighteen miles wide. But we heard IT down .

this truck twice a year.

Carry as thirteen people that go out to inspect every farm and every spot rats might next. Joris, in a spring inspection today, he turns the truck into a driveway of a farm. We see four big steel grain bins with some farm equipment in the art we're putting into where.

Just a very suspect area. I've fat an infestation at this yard before. So there was hundred years here. Inside this burning pid.

we come out of the truck to see if the rates have returned. The burning pit is eight feet or ten feet deep in the of good size swiming pool with a tangle stuff s sticking up. The farm wants to set up blaze and get rid of. There's that trees bar bar offending cow bones.

yes. So what we're doing and here we're just onna walk around this burning pit and we're looking on the edges for for halls rat runs like you can tell they use the same track over and over so he can tell where they've been and .

enjoy your climbing down.

What points is a whole? There could be old that he was .

around three inches around you. Yeah.

could be rat, could be new. Go for a wiz, ole or anything.

We, about dozens of other holes. They can, small, but no science of life. The red fees are food by the holes.

Joy concludes. Probably no rats here. We're going to other farms. We're usually ended up, in just a few minutes, the grounds and balls barely out, open doors to steal grain bins. The fact we find zero rats, that's typical joy, as five hundred occasionally inspects, and the number of actual infestations he discovers like a real nest.

But dozens or hundreds rats once every two years.

Well, so it's a bad infestation once every two years. And then how many other times would you find a right? Let's say any year.

like last year, I found one one solo and probably none the year before that. Maybe none the year before that.

Yeah yeah, there must be a part of you. You kind of wish like you hope you find something .

you than you do yeah so you have to remind yourself sometimes why you're doing IT because they can get fairly dry like you're just i've been all these yards so many times in my life is the same thing every time.

This is a dirty secret of the worlds most effective that control program. They have done such a good job that at this point, this kind of boring joy and currents both use that word. It's like, joy is batman, and every ninety goes out looking for criminals and never, ever find some there to say.

I took them a long time to get to this point. Back in the first years of the programme, in the one thousand and fifteen, Karen says the teams who would discover six hundred infestations a year in the red controls on along the border, but the one hundred and sixty, they still needed two hundred fifty pest control officers to find out and kill rats. Today, like I said, it's just thirteen people.

Instead, six hundred and five stations a year. It'll be just two to five, take IT on a second, just two to five infestations, over three hundred miles border. One thing, help some keep the numbers of.

I thought this was interesting, is the death of the family far cannot, just like in the us, so many small farmers have one on the business over the last half century that the remaining farmers are really far apart. So if that still away in feed or supplies and then land on a farm, it's hard for them to migrate to a neighbor. The auction of farms hasn't just been Better for small farmers, been Better for rat.

Then when you find some, it's exciting. When you find some.

get a sense of just how monitor ous jab usually is when he talks about the last big infestation is especially memorable because instead of using poison, which is the Normal way they hand IT, the lan donor is the wonder discovered the red. They told jury lunch to come out and make a shocking.

They had me up, and they splayed all the bullets for the shocking and shells I brought my shocked and open my other three friends in wege shoot, stand in a horse shoe. It's kind of like your shooting clay pigeons or ski, if you know that that is, yeah, they just go running out of the holes and you get time to shoot them and then reload. IT was a tonic fund for good friends and four shocked guns and yeah, that was was a great day.

Was my first, first station to that. Yeah, yeah. I had just started being mentored by my predecessor, so was pretty exciting that I actually got to go out and see rats. My first day knows about .

three years ago, I Carry talks about what was a great about this. He says the sentence, you cannot imagine an new york or uterine in the same tone of voice.

I actually got to see life routes.

I told jy. I was worried. The people who hear glee overshooting rat and think is a monster. He said IT was actually a quicker death and poison.

probably less painful.

Course, if you truly want to keep up burtt, for you can't just patrol the border strait, rats can hit ride in a truck or car, and the calgary or edmonton, and one of the other big cities or cards in the middle, the province, when that happens, and IT does happen, a britain is the most to notify. Currents office used to be a phone number. You could call phy spotted b.

There are alive anywhere in the province. The Carrying an extremely in the process by creating an email address. So we could could just shoot a photo of the suspect, ritter intended to her back the truck SHE put out her phone and but an email folder overfilled with hundreds of roden pigs.

I got a couple on friday, couple on thursday. So this photo here, this is pretty typical. I have, I know right away when I look at IT. IT is a muscle at a must.

Grat is not a rat. It's bigger pepper a but Karen says he faces a funny problem from Albertini reporting.

Alberta's, don't know if you ve lived in Alberta your whole life, you've never seen a rat. So identifying IT is is pretty hard.

In twenty, twenty three of the four hundred forty nine reports the camera on god, only twenty three or rat official stats, actually, with the others as non rats. Sometimes, of course, people do bring in rats intentionally to the province as pets, but Alberta, that is breaking the law, and then Albertson will drop a dime, or red Peter, nor even on people they know.

Sometimes IT .

can be a bad break up.

This has happened. And yes, so people have been ratted out to me, and in this case was an next boyfriend.

and he was not happy about this caring div SHE doesn't these cases? SHE gives you a week to find your rat at home and another province if you don't succeed, the youth and I, your pet.

Whenever anybody tries to estimate how much money Albert saves by having no rats, the numbers are in the tens of millions. That's craps that weren't eaten, an infrastructure that wasn't degraded and the cost each year to keep that out of Albert. Shocking ago.

But we three hundred and eighty thousand dollars, which is less than the Price of one new york city garbage truck. The low cost and already a successful evening out rats is probably thanks this more lucky geography, Karen says nami, they will have to control one border. Rs, don't comment from the west because there are mountains.

Rs, aren't, don't cross mountains. They don't come up in the U. S, because Karen says it's too far between food sources, and they don't come down from the north because it's too cold for s up there.

O so the humans of Alberta abandon together in a civic minded mission that no other members of our species have been successful at, and a very interested to find out, is that a big deal to Albertson? Do they feel a sense of achievement? Do they feel a sense of pride about that? Cuse me.

Are you? Ela, I produce ella, and I approach to burtons on a three day outside of compound full of animals that they do allow into the province with the zoo. No, there's no radix of IT. We checked and we asked everybody to name the things that make Alberta special and different one in how many of them would mention their epic recklessness, because that they said.

the national parks cost to live in does .

seem to so much closer than you think.

Diversity lately.

Gas Prices. This is a land of oil and gas. I guess nobody's .

managing ing the wildlife, all the lakes and all oil forest to the north.

the .

mountains, moons, the rock for sure. We have to a few dozen people. Not one mentioned rat. So this is my asking is because do you know about the rat situation in Alberta?

There is no red situation.

Say more.

I don't know. They've kept them out. Theyve had policies to keep them out ever since, I can remember. So there are no rates.

I take you from this conversation that isn't like a point of pride or something.

No, rats, no.

no, not really. Once ly literally haven't thought about IT.

and so he brought .

IT out just now.

Lots of people said they knew they were know that the guy about IT. But IT is not a point of pride. This is a thing if something is not around you, don't think about IT one teenager put IT that's like thinking .

why there's no jasp walk around here like this, just kind of Normal to us.

Also turned out like an Alberta, not so different from life in the rats filled rest of human civilization ation. Because Alberta has its own share of path. In fact, as we strive the outside, the zoo, an animal ran by us on the grass and the family we were talking to was like, yeah, go first there.

Everywhere you see them a lot. We probably have as many ground dogs and party dogs in new york ads add in the out control zone on the border. Current jury confirmed that of all the pests they have in province mice, wild fair of pigs, the worst one is golfers. Anyway, that's what everybody calls them. Golfers Carry pots out to, actually.

Richard and ground worlds .

you could call IT the here.

There is a war against golfers, for sure. There is an extreme war against golfers.

So when your farm do you have to put out a poisonous for the governess?

Yeah where else you have to be like my dad and shoot a few hundred a day? Where else is like we still don't have under control. There's just thousands.

You could sit in one spot all day and shoot, go fers without moving. And then there's just holes. And IT makes you field rough and bouncy y and messy and theyll eat your grain. You're terrible.

I hate him. I.

Bet my dad is shot probably two thousand golfers already this season. Like any time he's not too busy working, that's what he goes, and that's.

So wait, so so but then you're out here keeping the rats up, but you have the other post that just as bad .

almost wo yeah this one, this one we can eradicate ate that one is too far gone. We just there's nothing we can leave about .

IT really do. Yeah yeah. Where's a norway? Your room at is not.

It's an species, I know. But just because their canadian doesn't mean terrible .

for you .

IT does standing .

there in the right control .

current did try to make the case that rats are way worse than govern, cover down over into a house or Green bin and leather P M. pool. They don't choose their forms into the same kinds of destruction.

But in the end, what IT comes down to is go fers our canadian. So what are you going to do? Like, great to new york didn't kill a few thousand here there, but they are not going away. Even the province is standing impossible. Some things truly impossible.

So what do you guys think you can enter Alberta, canada?

Oh, no. 哦， so, oh, no. H, we don't get to ada, to the edn oilers.

Okay, that was time for g for put that down. You can see that OK. So this is another .

way that you guys organized for us. Just explain what you did.

yeah. What we did was you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we went under the lancy street.

We got some microphones. We settle up in a real, really be a real street. Very, very like fairness is called.

very. This is real rap, talking, real issues. Talk about that real, real, real. Red, red.

Now, I have actually heard this recording. And just an important fact for our human listeners to know before we play this, I should tell you that litters, they discuss red letters, are about a dozen pups. And and this is important to know.

Male rats sometimes eat baby rats. And when they have stated this with live rats, they ve found that the males are less likely to eat their own babies in the right. You guys.

exactly that is not like you like good, but have a lot of babies. Four reason .

and other thing. Scientists of theorize that female rats may choose to mate with lots of males to protect their own pups from being eaten. So where we can tell no studies have tested that yet. Okay, um anything you guys think we need to say to set this up?

No, just just for the tip. Quick warning story knowledges this sex between mammals?

Okay, this is .

a conversation between rats. Yeah, I have. Okay, i'm pregnant. No way.

Yeah, and you sure is mine one of percent, because we all know. No, I did have set with every other man right here. But solution, yeah, wow.

See you not to eat down? Yeah, because there are yours. Yeah, probably, I probably wanna tell me OK, especially if there under of food traps and garbage.

If I fall, I definitely wanted them. okay? And even if i'm not full, I probably won't eat them because there is baby. Yeah, this is the happiest news.

I would, I would say that there's a slim chance I would eat more than a couple of these babies, but i'm so I graduated, want to be a monster here. But gina had some babies. If you're feeling a little packagers, that's interesting.

Probably I don't dinas baby dinas babies probably wouldn't hit the, you know. Really doing so compassed SHE didn't get so emotional. H, oh, okay.

So you know that about gina really? Well, then I say, how, when many genes? babies? Well, okay, are they only genus babies? Are they? I know they are genes.

yeah. I seem so too well, then why are you eating them? I don't know something instinctively all.

Listen, these are eleven yours there. I said that these are even ventures. That's why I wanna them so bad.

I mean, you have to give me credit. I promise not to eat more than one six of those babies. When we both kind of instinct, you keep your promises.

You really keep your promises. Hey, i'm sorry, didn't work out. You're great partner.

But I guess things bounce the wrong way. I guess. I guess I am pregnant, gina. I didn't mean to do IT. I can see your nose watching just when you say her name. I know I should have known her beauty, little eyes, and he told me he was partment. Once a read, always read.

Shut out to our friends, Jerry, in the weed man, you will join, produce that story.

In the baby.

A program was put today by dion will and ice trees.

Counteraction of the show was produced kiffer produce that story from Alberta.

The people put together our show today include the abandon my computer. If you put a corn for bathroom hot take casey hoey, sephton, tubal, Nelson, Catherine, senior editors, David camm, our executive editor, is a manual berry. Help on today's rerun from Henry garson was broadcast a year ago. Since then, Dennis on top, the show says a land gard did send a guy who cleaned up the trash, took your other ads tod, the single garden at one who was trying to get rid of his rats, finally succeeded doing that three months ago. He says, ninety percent, you would get another rat of the .

opportunity, presented itself more of his fail, the ark with the university library, and that would state smart and go to share up and I real life.

if you guys are but the lahd dean and change russia, you guys got to hear your real voices. Hello, hello.

hi everybody.

So and people can see you on the T V shows outside on max, and you gona be in chairman showcase live at the L A. Theatre and rosand dualism, september twenty fifth. Sometimes are you storing in the film? All happy families were just come in in september. So thank you so much. You're doing this.

Thank you. Thank you for heaven. Nervously is awesome. The red improve in our list story was Chris gathered in tammi.

Sagar isn't a host .

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