NYC ranks below these two cities for 2023’s ‘rattiest’ title
Despite its real-life rat tours, unofficial Pizza Rat mascot, designated rat czar and a mayor famously obsessed with annihilating the rodents, New York City is not the “rattiest” city in the country, according to a new report from pest control company Orkin.
The Big Apple has actually dropped a spot in Orkin’s annual rattiest rankings from a year earlier, coming in at number three behind Los Angeles and Chicago — the latter of which took the top spot for the ninth year in a row.
The “Top 50 Rattiest Cities” list ranked US metropolises based on the number of new rodent treatments performed between September 2022 and August 2023.
New York City took second place in last year’s rat race but swapped spots with LA in this year’s list.
Washington, DC and San Francisco rounded out the top five respectively.
Orkin releases the list each fall when mice and other rodents invade nearly 21 million homes across the nation, but the list isn’t an actual count of every rat in every major city — which would be near impossible. The list instead indicates the demand for extermination and pest control services at both residences and businesses.
Mayor Eric Adams, a known rat-hater, launched an offensive on the Big Apple’s whiskered residents since he was elected to City Hall — famously hiring a designated “rat czar” to drive out the rat population for $155,000 a year.
In June, rodent complaints across the five boroughs dropped 15% from the same time last year, though experts warned it may be impossible to tell if the rat numbers were actually shrinking or New Yorkers gave up complaining about their mousey neighbors.
In the latest crackdown on the city’s critters, Adams announced new rules that would require homeowners to shell out at least $50 for new trash bins selected by the city in an effort to standardize and rat-proof the containers.
The city has already required restaurants, bodegas and grocery stores to use garbage containers with lids since August. The administration said the efforts so far have led to a 20% reduction in 311 complaints of rats.
But despite his war on rats, the mayor himself was fined $300 in February after officials found that conditions at his Lafayette Avenue rental property in Bedford-Stuyvesant encouraged “the nesting of rats,” including Hizzoner’s failure to use rodent-proof bins for recycling.
