The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, completed in a few days one of those journeys that go from the glory of heaven to the underworld, it’s called hell, if you will.
Adams, who is a Christian, but not Catholic, was welcomed to the Vatican at the weekend by Pope Francis. The fact that the holy father gave him the blessing, which must have comforted his spirit, does not prevent that, back in the Big Apple, it is already clear that it has not made him more pious towards his worst enemies: the rats.
Contradicting the Bible, he does not consider them other creatures of the Lord, but an image of Satan. The “damned rodents”, so cute in the cartoons, are the representation of the underworld by the ex-police turned politician.
“New Yorkers may not know this about me, but I hate rats and I’m sure most of the residents of this city think the same,” said the mayor in the statement where he made an unprecedented announcement.
On his return from Rome he came up trumps in his war against the Murids. New York, always a point of reference, will hold the first “national summit” on urban rats on September 18 and 19. Rather, against these mammals who, despite their lousy poster, act as New Yorkers. It is only necessary to take a nocturnal trip down any street in the metropolis to observe how a bag of garbage hangs around in a sewer drain.
There are those who put humor into the matter and use irony to equate this quote with “the Yalta conference” (Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill negotiating the end of World War II), but applied to the conflict with these beings, expression of globalization long before globalization, which provoke a social rejection. You are on a terrace, suddenly you hear an “ah!” and there’s the little animal, holding a bag of chips (and it’s not an exaggeration).
“The best way to defeat the enemy is to know the enemy”, added Adams to justify the call. “We will hold this inaugural summit so that experts and leaders in the field from all over the country will come, and in this way, together, better understand urban rats and how to manage their population,” he said. Academic researchers or municipal pest managers are invited to the meeting, who will share sessions dedicated to rodent mitigation tasks and scientific progress on the treatment of urban rats. There will be experts coming from cities such as Boston, New Orleans or Seattle.
In April 2023, Adams named Kathleen Corradi as the director or czar of the rodent mitigation office, a position she held for the first time. This more aggressive tactic has paid off and sightings have dropped by 13% in the last year.
There is no lack of critical voices. Michael Parsons, an urban ecologist at Fordham University, warned a few months ago that “several mayors have declared war on rats and there have been few obvious benefits.”
For his part, Jakob Shaw, project manager at the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, emphasized after the announcement of the summit that Adams’ violent rhetoric about rats is very worrying. “It doesn’t help anyone or anything. We must respect these animals and work with intention and great care to address the problem. This call is not needed to conclude that leaving millions of kilos of garbage on the streets of New York is a constant source of food for rats”, he declared to Gothamist.
The City Council is trying to keep garbage bags on the sidewalks for fewer hours, while containers are being deployed to ensure that a greater amount of the more than 20 million kilos of waste generated every day in the city is taken care of.
Specialists warn that it is necessary to go to the origin. Two rats can produce 15,000 offspring. Herein lies the strength of what Adams calls “public enemy number one.”
