By Gayne C. Young
PETA thinks New Yorkers are “disgusting.”
Wait.
I might agree with them on this one.
Ashley Byrne, Campaign Specialist at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told the Daily Mail that the real reason New York City has an infestation of rats is because of “disgusting human behavior.”
Ouch.
The truth hurts.
Byrne further added, “As long as humans are littering and leaving garbage, rats will be there. You can hire whoever, rats will come and go as they please as long as the streets stay filthy.” Byrne is, of course, referring to the city’s estimated 2 million vermin infestation and newly hired Rat Czar, Kathleen Corradi. The formally titled Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation, Corradi unveiled a $3.5 million plan to combat the rats last week. The plan involves hiring full-time exterminators, adding “rat slabs” to prevent floor burrowing, and requiring more city inspections of buildings in high rat-traffic areas. Corradi and city officials believe this plan will work.
Byrne doesn’t.
“All you need have to do [sic] is walk down the street to see what the issue is,” Byrne said. “You can hire whoever, rats will come and go as they please as long as the streets stay filthy. A lethal solution will not change that. A real solution takes time and effort to bring change in the long-term. It’s unfortunate that instead we are subjected to these performances. We need more diligent trash collection, and to get New Yorkers to stop leaving trash on their city’s streets and treating it like a garbage dump”
I hate to agree with her seeing as how she’s from PETA, but she’s absolutely correct.
Byrne also had issue with how the new Rat Czar was hired as the requirements for the $155,000 a year position stated that applicants must be motivated, have a “swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor and general aura of badassery,” and be “somewhat bloodthirsty.” She said the idea of hiring someone to cull “intelligent and sensitive creatures” is “inhumane.”
Nah.
I think she meant…FUN!
Come on. Who doesn’t like offing rats?
As for Corradi, she’s hated rats since she was 10 years old. According to her mother, it was then that the young soon-to-be Rat Czar came across a dead rat on the train tracks in Long Island. She was so disgusted by the cadaver that she started a petition to get the Long Island Rail Road to do something about the problem and they did.
Corradi is not the only high-ranking city official to hate rats though. Mayor Eric Adams was quoted as saying “There’s nothing I hate more than rats” while discussing the position of Citywide Director of Rodent Mitigation. That hate doesn’t go so far as to personally killing rats apparently as, in December, Adams was served a summons for a rat infestation at his Brooklyn home. Adams fought the ticket in a hearing before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings in February, but in the end was ordered to pay $300.
Rats protect their own, I guess.
To review, I agree with PETA in that New Yorkers need to clean up their act so far as garbage goes, but am 100% in favor of killing the rats already in the city.
