AUTHORITIES worldwide love to quote the statistic one rat per human, says Robert Sullivan, even though a thorough 1949 analysis by rodent control expert Dave Davis put the New York City rat population at about 250,000 for 8 million inhabitants. You share your rat with 31 neighbours. Although if one comes up out of your toilet bowl, that鈥檚 still one too many.
Sullivan was fascinated by glimpses of rats in New York. Equally fascinating is the story of the year he spent watching rats in a Lower East Side back alley. He took his task seriously, and Rats includes both statistics and amazing rat stories. Foot-long rats live in trees in Brooklyn. The theatre-goer attacked by rats on her way home. Rats in the World Trade Center rubble. And so on.
But the meat of Sullivan鈥檚 book is the historical impact of rats. Rat-hopping fleas brought plague to San Francisco and exposed the horrible living conditions of Chinatown. Rats fuelled rent strikes and capitalised on the garbage strike of 1968.
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Want to get rid of rats? Like bacteria, the strongest rats survive and reproduce even faster after the exterminator visits. Instead, get rid of the garbage. Or throw out only raw vegetables.
Rats
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