For years the various mayors of New York City have been doing their best to rid the city of its rat problem. I wrote about Mayor DeBlasio vowing to tame the rodent population almost exactly five years ago. Yesterday, current Mayor Eric Adams announced his appointment of a new rat czar.

The search for New York City’s first-ever “rat czar” has come to an end.

Kathleen Corradi has been hired as the city’s director of rodent mitigation, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

Corradi will coordinate city agencies such as the Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene, Parks and Recreation, and Sanitation and find “innovative ways to cut off rats’ food sources” and use “new technologies to detect and exterminate rat populations,” Adams’ office said in a news release Wednesday. She will earn a salary of $155,000 a year, he said at a news conference with reporters.

Frankly that doesn’t seem like enough money. In a city which might have as many as 2 million rats, the rat czar has a big job on her hands. Yes, I agree pizza rat was sort of cute but not all encounters with rats are as charming. Today the NY Times published a story about rat horror stories in the city and it genuinely makes me so glad I don’t live there.

Late one night while he was living in a basement apartment in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan, Ben Regenspan, 37, became one of the unlucky New Yorkers to witness a rat emerge from their toilet.

Mr. Regenspan, a software engineer, heard a splashing sound while brushing his teeth. “I screamed, flushed, he swam back down. I poured in a bunch of cleaning products and flushed again,” he said.

That would be horrifying but I don’t think it’s as bad as this next one.

“I found rat feces, like, in my actual bed. In my bathtub,” said Rachel Bryant, 26, who created a TikTok video detailing the rat infestation in her Chinatown apartment building.

Here’s her first clip. I don’t know how anyone could sleep in this apartment ever.

@blondeanddepressed

This is just the Rat problem in my nyc apartment building. We are 16 tenants that have formed a union against management because they refuse to acknowledge the rat problem and many problems in our apartments/building. We contact 311 but even still they get fined, pay the fines and the problems continue. Pt. 2 coming soon #newyork #newyorkrat #tenant #311 #rats

♬ Love You So – The King Khan & BBQ Show

Rats apparently only bite humans on rare occasions. The Times story does include sone such story about a guy who (unwisely) tried to rescue a rat from the jaws of his own dog. The rat responded by biting his finger. But more common is rats attacking one another:

“They were fighting each other,” Ms. Savage, who is in ad sales, said, “and then one rat killed the other one. In front of my eyes.”

Before she could even process what had happened, more carnage ensued: “About 20 milliseconds later, a CitiBike speeds by and kills the murderer — the rat murderer.” There was blood everywhere, she said, and it looked like “a rat Romeo and Juliet scene — they were laid across each other, bloody.”

I was really counting on some more horrifying rat stories in the comments and there were a few:

I have many, many rat stories living on the UWS for decades but the one that always sticks is this one. One bitterly cold Friday after work about 20 years ago we packed up our car with our infant daughter safe in her carseat and headed up to our upstate getaway. Two and a half hours later we arrived, unloaded, started a fire to get the house warm and went to bed. In the morning we go out to the car to find a BIG rat sitting inside the car, on the dashboard, sunning himself! My mind still reels when I think about where this guy was hunkered down with us. Did he enjoy a fallen french fry from our drive-thru McDonald’s order and how close he might have been to our daughter who could not speak up and did not know to alert us if he ran across her feet!

I have no idea if this is true but this is the top comment:

There’s an old woman on E 65th street who comes out early on Saturday mornings to feed the rats like she’s feeding pigeons. She’s always dressed in typical UES style–Gucci this, Versace that–and she literally lets hundreds of rats swarm all over her while she coos at them and pets her favorites. I’ve even seen them nibble on croissants straight from her mouth. This is what the city is up against.

Another one:

The horror story the “czar” would hear from ME is this one:

I’ve lived in the same apartment for over 30 years, in a building that does NOT typically have any kind of rat problem (and on a block that does not typically have any kind of rat problem). A couple of months ago, I was awakened at 2 AM by a strange sound in my apartment. The sound was coming from a good-sized adolescent RAT that was in my living room (which is next to my bedroom). I got up and was able to chase the rat down and beat it to death with an old sneaker. Not what one wants to be doing at 2 AM nor at any other time of the day.

And one more rat in the toilet story.

I lived at 320 East 91st Street in 1977. I went to take a bath one day and had left the tub to fill. When I opened the bathroom door, there was a rat perched on the edge of my clawfoot tub. I closed the door, and got the only weapon at hand—a broom. When I again opened the bathroom door, I watched the rat dive from the edge of the tub into my toilet; I can still see his tail swishing back and forth as he made his escape. The next day, my next-door neighbor was bitten on her butt by a rat while she was using the toilet; she went to the hospital.

Finally, one reader at the Times has regrets about reading the story and the comments:

Introspection: why did I read this story? I didn’t have to read it, yet I did, and it was as horrifying as I’d imagined. And then I read the comments!

Personally, I love a good horror story but not enough to move to New York City.