When New York City Mayor Eric Adams appointed Kathleen Corradi to be Gotham’s “rat czar” earlier this year (“rat czarina?”), I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical. Nearly every mayor of the Big Apple going back at least to Rudy Giuliani’s time in office has launched a “war on rats” in one form or another. Each of those wars failed miserably and the only winner in the end was Pizza Rat. A great deal of time and money has gone into the effort, but the number of rats never seems to decrease noticeably. But is that about to change? Business Insider reports this week that a new ratslayer has entered the ring using a unique new method of rodent eradication. And it’s proven so effective that officials claim that an entire “population” on the Upper East Side has been “all but exterminated.” It almost sounds too good to be true, and it probably is.

New York City officials have found a new way to kill rats that’s so effective an entire population on an Upper East Side street has been all but exterminated.

Councilmember Julie Menin told Gothamist the method has successfully eliminated over 100 rat burrows on a section of East 86th Street since the effort was launched last year. The strategy involves pumping carbon monoxide directly into the rat burrows that are found in sidewalk tree beds.

“The method demonstrated an impressive eradication rate of nearly 100% in the tree pits where it was applied,” Menin’s office said in a release, according to Gothamist.

The person working this magic has been exterminator Matt Deodato, the president of Urban Pest Management. The method he developed involves pumping carbon monoxide (CO) down into the rat burrows, flooding the tunnels and dens until the rats all die of oxygen deprivation. And it seems to have been very effective indeed. Carbon monoxide is, of course, deadly, including to humans in enclosed spaces, but it dissipates quickly once it’s out in the open so the danger to the public seems minimal at best.

Before we get too excited, there are a few things to remember. First of all, this “success” has taken place only on a couple of blocks of East 86th Street. And even then, it’s only been used in the burrows below the unpaved greenery strips next to the streets known as the “tree pits.” For a generous estimate, they may have killed somewhere in the range of 0.002 percent of the city’s estimated 3 to 5 million rats.  But yes, at least in those burrows, the rats seem to have been almost entirely killed off… for now.

Several issues come to mind. First and foremost, Deodato is killing off the rats that have dug burrows under the tree pits, and congrats to him for doing that. But the vast majority of rats in Gotham live in other habitats, including the sewers, cracks in the walls in the subways, and even in the buildings. The sewers would be impossible to effectively flood with CO sufficiently. And if you start doing it to the subways and buildings you quickly run into that pesky problem I mentioned above that involves killing off all of the people as well.

Also, even for the tree pits, I already mentioned how quickly CO dissipates once the supply is shut off unless you can somehow create a permanent airtight seal around the affected area. The rats in those burrows are dead today, but the CO has already dissipated. New rats are no doubt already moving in and they likely won’t be all that put off by a bunch of their dead colleagues lying about.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t try, nor am I arguing that Deodato is ignoring some better, more obvious solution. There isn’t one that anyone has identified as far as I know. Rats follow people because people generate garbage and edible waste. And New York City is massively overflowing with both people and garbage (insert your own joke about “or both” here) so the rats follow in droves. The only way to eliminate them would be to eliminate their food source and that would require massive changes in lifestyle, waste management, and a host of other human behaviors and practices that we are unlikely to even try to achieve in our lifetimes. I’m not trying to be a predictor of doom and gloom here, but I’m fairly sure that the next round is already almost over and Pizza Rat will be declared the winner yet again.