Rat Race

Mayor Eric Adams took office setting out to solve three goals to make New York a “livable city”: by “fighting crime, fighting inequality, and fighting rats” – symbols of New York’s ongoing and out-of-control downward spiral. Now he’s looking for a rat murderer, and he’s willing to pay up to $170,000 for the right candidate.

Adams’s administration posted a job listing recently looking for a “rat czar,” a candidate to lead the city’s long-running battle against rats. The official job title is “director of rodent mitigation,” and the ideal qualifier should be “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty, determined to look at all solutions from various angles, including improving operational efficiency, data collection, technology innovation, trash management, and wholesale slaughter,” according to the listing, which described New York’s rats as “cunning, voracious, and prolific,” who are “legendary for their survival skills.”

It might sound like a holiday joke, but the job is actually quite daunting, if not impossible. New York City leaders have been trying to control the multi-million rat population for over a century, with negligible results.

Local authorities in New York have long admitted that eliminating rats from the city is unrealistic, but have made various efforts over the years to control the rodents, with only marginal success. It used to be that after receiving complaints of rat infestation, officials would send exterminators to attack the scene with traps and rat poison – but that was often too little, too late. In recent years though, the city began to focus on preventive measures, although city rats managed to survive a multimillion-dollar effort under former mayor Bill de Blasio that focused on better trash pickups, housing inspections in targeted neighborhoods, and landlord fines.