Sentricon's Always Active Termite System available from Magic Exterminating

Those Terrible Termites

Understanding the Sentricon Always Active Termite System

What to Expect from the
Sentricon Always Active Termite System

Sentricon Always Active Termite System Proven Protection &
Environmentally Responsible

Spring is Here! Prepared for Termites, Carpenter Ants / Bees & Wasps

Magic Exterminating expects a big surge in pest activity this Spring due to the mild winter and the topic is becoming a hot item on the Internet.

Termites remain active all year round. There colonies are beneath the ground below the frost line.

They travel in mud tubes that protect them. In the Spring, the warmth from the sun and moisture from rain, triggers there breeding cycle.

Swarmers (reproductive termites) emerge above ground and mate. This is sometimes the first evidence we have that an active colony is attacking our home or business.

Magic recommends the Sentricon Termite Elimination

System which is a proven method of eliminating

termite colonies. 

The newest and the best. Sentricon Always Active.

Sentricon's new Recruit HD bait gives year round protection.

See the video here http://www.sentricon.com/solution/how.htm new installation only

Carpenter Ants bore into the wood of our homes and business' and the colony lives within the beams. As the colony grows it splits, moving to another area of the structure where they repeat the destructive behavior. If the colony has begun to split they can do excessive damage and tracking down the satellite colonies can be difficult. Carpenter Ants also have winged reproductives (Breeding Ants) that may emerge.

Paper Wasps & Hornets & Yellow Jackets all become active once the Queen emerges from wintering over. The Queen quickly begins to produce worker bees to the colony and the hive structure grows rapidly. All of these winged insects will become highly aggressive if they believe there nest (Hive) is being threatened. The shadow from your hand or body is enough to trigger them into attack mode.

Magic can handle all of the above problems and more.

Magic also offers Annual Pest Control Agreements that cover most common pest and include free emergency service.

For your free inspections contact us at 718-961-9000 or email us at

For more information visit our website at http://www.MagicExterminating.com/

Magic has recieved our Trademark registration

Why is Winter Pest Control so Important?

Why is Winter Pest Control so Important?


I often hear "It's winter. The bugs are all dead. I don't need my workplace or home serviced." This is a very common misconception.

First, our homes and business' create false environments; they are heated during the winter and cooled during the summer. These false environments allow many common pests such as Termites, Carpenter Ants, the various Tramp Ants, Roaches and many other invaders to set up shop within the walls, attic, basement and storage areas of our homes or business'.

Next, rodents, who live in burrows, actively scavenge throughout the winter. If they are able to exploit our homes they most definitely will.

Lastly, winters vary in their intensity. The winter of 2010-2011 has been wet and fairly mild, with temperatures reaching into the 50's. The combination of moisture and moderate temperatures trigger most pests into activity.

Here are some ways to deter Winter Pests:

* Seal off holes on the outside of the structure, where insects may gain entry. Smaller holes can be patched with silicone caulk or spackle, while larger ones may require concrete to fill.

* Check around baseboards and inside cabinets for cracks and crevices that could hide pests, and fill holes accordingly.

* Remove sources of food and water, which include dishes in the sink and crumbs inside cabinets and desks at your business.

* Outside, mulch and firewood hold moisture, making them popular hiding places for rodents. Store these items at least two feet from exterior walls.

* Outdoors, trim hedges and trees that are in close proximity to the structure. The branches provide an easy path inside for insects & squirrels.

* To prevent squirrels and other animals from roosting in the eaves or attic, repair and patch any holes or other damage.

* Clean out gutters and overhangs, where rodents can also build their nests.

* Store yard waste ,like leaves and moss, away from the structure prior to disposal. These materials are popular nesting materials.

* Keep birdseed in a sealed metal container. Mice can gnaw through plastic and eat seeds.

* Common entry points are around pipes, where small cracks are frequently just large enough for a mouse to squeeze through. Block holes with copper meshing.

* Inside, eradicate clutter that can hide mice and rat nests, and provide material for the nests themselves.

At Magic Exterminating we practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Our technicians inspect for the above conditions, treat when necessary, and inform you of required corrections that will keep your business and home pest free.

For a free estimate please contact us through our website at www.magicexterminating.com or by calling any of the phone numbers listed above.

In the News Mouse at McDonald's, Cyborg Rats & Washington DC's new Pest Law

Mouse in Bag of McDonald's Buns

Magic Exterminating can help prevent this from happening at your Restaurant or Food Preparation Business.

Our Technicians are highly trained by our 3 Entomologists to find the source of the Rodent problem, eliminate present populations and prevent future infestations.

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New Washington D.C. law forces exterminators to capture and relocate rats, and critters

http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wtvr-mark-on-d.c.-rat-law-20120116,0,1815294.premiumvideo  
 

Mark Holmberg wdbj7.com

11:19 p.m. EST, January 16, 2012

Ken Cuccinelli, the man who interprets and enforces Virginia law, said a year-old Washington D.C. law could cause a flood of rats and mice across the Potomac into Virginia from the nation’s capital.

During a recent interview with WMAL radio in the Washington area about the rat infestation in Occupy D.C. parks, Cuccinelli said, “Last year, in its finite wisdom, the D.C. City Council passed a law, a triumph of animal rights over human health, where those pest control people you suggested they bring in aren’t allowed to kill the rats. They have to relocate the rats. And not only that – that’s really not the worst part – they can’t break of the families of the rats . . . it’s worse than our immigration policy.” Really, sir?

We read the law, the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (B18-498). There’s no doubt it is very animal-friendly. Pests like raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks and pigeons have to be humanely trapped – no more snap traps or glue traps. And all the humane traps must be checked every 24 hours, at the least.

If possible, the critter must be relocated, humanely, which is a tough job in D.C. because it’s mostly all city. And every effort must be made to move the whole family of animals.

But right there on page one of the Wildlife Protection Act it said “commensal rodents” are exempted – they’re still fair game for extermination. That’s your Norway rat, roof rat and common house mouse.

Also, there’s plenty of wiggle room in the law. If relocation options are not feasible, it’s okay to euthanize the animals.

We asked Cuccinelli’s office about this, and his press secretary said the rice rat and deer mouse are not exempt, and they’re also concerned about infections like Lyme disease being spread by rodents and other animals relocated to Virginia.

Here’s the entire statement:

“The attorney general says he was afraid that the D.C. law might encourage transporting rats from DC, as it encourages catch-and-release technique.” (if you read this article, you will see that wildlife experts said the same thing: http://www.arlnow.com/2012/01/12/cuccinelli-smells-a-rat-in-d-c/).

The word from wildlife control experts is that to be effective in that method, animals should be released far from their catch point -- perhaps across the Potomac in Virginia -- so they do not return. The law exempts some types of rats, but not all.

While certain "commensal rodents" (which include two species of rats) are exempted from the law, the rice rat and the deer mouse are species that wildlife control experts note are within the District that are NOT defined as commensal rodents, so they would appear not to be exempt from the law (ie. - they would be required to be caught and released, etc.)

In addition to these particular rats and mice, raccoons, squirrels, skunks and other animals known to carry rabies, Lyme Disease, and other diseases are not exempt from the law.

While rats were one example the attorney general gave, there are many other examples of wildlife that he could have used. The point he was making is that certain rats, mice, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, and other animals known to carry rabies, Lyme Disease, and other diseases have the possibility of being transported to Virginia, where they could infect humans. That is why he has been concerned about this issue.”

But since it’s against the law to transport wildlife across state lines, it is doubtful there’s going to be a flood of rabid or tick-infested raccoons any time soon.

That said, the law is going to make pest control more expensive and difficult in D.C.

Commonly used snap and glue traps for rats and mice appear to be out because they could catch non-exempt animals, like chipmunks and squirrels.

Clyde Wilson, with Anytime Pest Control in the Richmond area, said snap traps (like mousetraps) and particularly glue traps are effective tools in fighting rat and mice infestations.

And that the mandate requires traps be checked every 24-hours will add to the cost of many extermination jobs, he said.

But what the Wildlife Protection Act doesn’t address is the use of junkets, PAC money and sweet stock deals to bait and trap the rats that roam the halls of Congress in our nation’s capitol.

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Controversial cyborg rat tests target brain treatments

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16305299

By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News

A researcher monitors a sedated rat as part of the research project at Tel Aviv University

A rat lies motionless on a sterile, spotless table. It is alive, but heavily sedated. Closer inspection reveals that this is no ordinary rodent. Electrodes are being used to stimulate its brain, creating waveform readings on a nearby computer screen.

The rat is part of a research project at Israel's Tel Aviv University psychology department. Scientists are attempting to replace part of this and other rats' brains with digital equipment, effectively turning them into cyborgs.

Anti-vivisection campaigners have described the tests as "grotesque" but the researchers claim the work will eventually help them make repairs to what is possibly the world's most complex computer - the human brain.

Mending malfunctions

The work aims to help people with diseases such as Parkinson's or those who have suffered a stroke. It involves swapping impaired brain tissue with a microchip that is wired to the brain, allowing it to carry out the tasks that the healthy tissue would have performed.

"Imagine there's a small area in the brain that is malfunctioning, and imagine that we understand the architecture of this damaged area," says Prof Matti Mintz, a psychobiologist at Tel Aviv University who is involved in the international project.

Prof Mintz discusses the ethics of developing a human 'memory chip' "So we try to replicate this part of the brain with electronics." To do it, the researchers insert sets of electrodes up to 1cm deep inside a rat's brain and then connect them to a microchip embedded just under the skin of the rodent's skull.

The chip then receives and interprets sensory information from the brainstem - the lower area of the brain - and analyses it as the original biological part would, before transmitting the information back to motor centres in the brainstem.

"For example, there's a region of the brain that controls one simple motor movement - breathing," says Prof Mintz.

"Right now, if a patient loses this area, there's no way to recover. But if we're able in the future to replace such an area that is responsible for very discrete but extremely essential movement, it will be great.

"And it is on the horizon."

Bionic rats

To demonstrate that its idea works, the team applied the principle of classical conditioning, first demonstrated by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov in 1927.

He noticed that his dogs began salivating when they saw the person who fed them. So he used a bell to let them know that their meal was ready - and after just a few repetitions, he found out that the animals started to salivate when they heard the bell, even if the food was not there.

Prof Mintz's team did something similar with rats.

The researchers decided to work on an area of the brain called the cerebellum, which is responsible for controlling and timing motor movements, such as learning how to blink in response to a stimulus.

They took advantage of the fact that if a rat hears a particular sound before it gets hit with a jet of air, it will eventually blink when the sound is played ahead of the puff reaching its eyes.


Prof Mintz offered the BBC a tour of his lab at Tel Aviv University "We know how to blink. Currently, I'm blinking very freely," says Prof Mintz.

"We also know how to record that the animals are learning to respond to a stimulus - we plant electrodes around the eye, and record the muscle activity to see when the rat actually closes its eye.

"And we know that when we damage the biological structure [the cerebellum] the animal cannot learn this simple motor response any more, never again, and nothing in the brain can replace this learning.

"So after having studied this brain region, we constructed a simulation that works in a similar way to the original biological system - and when we see some recovery of the lost movement, it is clear that it is coming from our synthetic device and not from any other area of the brain."

Science amalgam

Science fiction helped the researchers come up with the idea of replicating a specific brain function with a microchip.

Continue reading the main story
“
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Lives are [being]wasted on dubious and ego-driven experiments.”
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National Anti-Vivisection Society
The genre has long been populated by cyborgs and other related creatures, from Terminator and Robocop to Isaac Asimov's bionic robots and Blade Runner's bioengineered "replicants".

Although neuroscientists have quite literally been picking at the brain for decades, it is only recently that there have been significant breakthroughs in the area.

One instance is a brain-computer interface which allows a person with disabilities to control a computer cursor through the power of thought alone. It works via electrodes attached to their brain which read specific signals.

Prosthetic limbs function through brain implants, too, but they also only work one way, receiving signals and interpreting them into physical actions.

Getting the artificial portion of the cerebellum to receive one set of signals and send out an entirely different set of commands proved especially challenging.


A computer model of the chip that is attached to the rat "The only way to for such a project to succeed is by combining different disciplines - and this is where 'nano-bio-info-cogno' comes in - uniting nanotechnology, biology, informatics and cognitive science," says Prof Mira Marcus-Kalish of Tel Aviv University, who is also taking part in the project.

"We take nanoelectrodes into a biology application, try to analyse everything through informatics, and then also use cognition."

The next step will be getting the rats to perform not just one, but several physical actions, says Prof Mintz.

"Let's imagine a person loses a big chunk of cerebellum, due to a haemorrhage, or a lesion, or due to ageing. Cerebellum ages very fast, and that's why we lose tiny motor functions," he says.

"So we need to find how to recover motor functions consistent of longer sequence of movements."

Future cyborgs?

"The more replacement parts we have for our body, the more people are not just alive, but healthy.”

Once the trials with rats are over and successful, the researchers plan to move to human subjects.

They say they hope to help people and save lives. However, animal rights activists describe the research as "disgraceful" and "abhorrent".

"This type of research raises enormous ethical concerns, let alone the poor animals whose lives are wasted on dubious and ego-driven experiments," says Jan Creamer, chief executive of the UK-based National Anti-Vivisection Society.

"The NAVS is totally opposed to all forms of animal experimentation and advocates the use of sophisticated non-animal techniques, which this clearly is not. As an example, we are currently funding a long-term project concerned with the human brain and its functions and our research uses cutting edge technology, not the outmoded animal model."

As the researchers replace bigger parts of the brain with electronics other questions are also likely to be raised: how far the research should be taken and how many neurons can be replaced before our bodies become controlled by a machine, rather than the other way round.

Prof Mintz says that 'brain enhancement' is a 'taboo' subject Although some may argue that we already interfere with nature when we implant a pacemaker or transplant a heart, the brain is viewed differently because it is the organ that controls everything in the human body.

"It's fascinating how people get worried when it comes to their brain, there's this fear that some alien intruder will take over ourselves," says psychologist Prof Carlo Strenger from Tel Aviv University, who is not involved in the study.

"But think of the many people who have suffered brain damages because of accidents, of the people with degenerative diseases - the more replacement parts we have for our body, the more people are not just alive, but healthy.

"One philosophical question could arise once we'll be able to download a person's whole brain onto a chip and then implant the chip into someone else's body.

"This is a problem we don't yet know how to solve. But we're not there yet."

New York Magazine Talks about Rats & Rat Busters NYC

Big Scary Ugly Dirty Rats

They’re everywhere — but they always were.

By Mark Jacobson Published Oct 30, 2011

In this city, even a dead rat can draw a crowd.

If the rat were scurrying between garbage cans, or running down a 4-train track, some yahoo would have said it was “giant, as big as a cat, ten pounds or more.” But being dead, its greasy fur splayed out on First Avenue near 6th Street, the rat’s dimensions were clear. It was about seven inches from tapered, beady-eyed head to the base of its ropy tail and probably weighed no more than a pound, average size for a mature individual of the species Rattus norvegicus, the brown or Norway rat. In other words, it was a typical New York City rat, the sort that arrived on these shores in the late-eighteenth century, beginning its inexorable colonization of the waterfront, tenement buildings, sewers, subway stations, and vacant lots—thriving to the point where it has become no less a symbol of the metropolis than the Empire State Building or a Katz’s pastrami sandwich. As such, the dead rat on First Avenue was just one more tourist attraction, and half a dozen smartphone paparazzi were ardently documenting its fallen state.

That would have been that except for the arrival on the scene of a couple of boisterous young men who whipped beer bottles from brown paper bags and, in a leering act of frat-boy street libation, spilled some Stella Artois on the bestilled rodent. The synaptical reaction took a moment to kick in, but then the formerly dead rat appeared to levitate, spinning a full 180 degrees above the sidewalk and sending stunned bystanders shrieking into the night.

One of evolution’s more triumphant guilty pleasures, the New York rat, whose precursors waged bio-guerrilla war against the post-dinosaur reptilian rear guard 50 million years ago, comes to the table sporting a dossier of astounding and sobering attributes. Female brown rats are sexually mature at eight-to-ten weeks and can produce a litter within 21 days of impregnation. They can mate again within eighteen hours of giving birth and routinely turn out more than 50 offspring per year. Rats can swim for more than half a mile, tread water for three days, sometimes even emerging in the bathroom bowl. They can gnaw through concrete and lead, collapse their skeletons to fit through a hole no bigger than a quarter. They can go for two weeks without sleeping, utilizing this extended wakefulness to devour everything in sight. According to an estimate, rats and their rodent allies eat and otherwise despoil up to one fifth of the world’s food supply. This is to say nothing of their role in wiping out half of Europe during the Black Death plague of the mid-1300s. The plague also killed many rats, but the rodent proved its staying power when several were found to have survived the atomic-bomb testing on the Eniwetok Atoll in 1945.

When it comes to who and what will be left standing following Armageddon, the rat has a compelling résumé. Yet it wasn’t until that late-summer evening in the East Village that the Rattus norvegicus added resurrection-by-beer to its vita. It mattered little that the rat staggered barely a few feet before keeling over again, likely succumbing to some exterminator’s slow-death dose of rodenticide. He had proved his point.

We are apparently in the midst of one of New York’s periodic rat outbreaks. If there are 8 million stories in the Naked City, maybe half of them are rat stories; uptown and down, everyone seems to have one. Rats have been reported overrunning playgrounds, burrowing in children’s sandboxes, dropping from trees in Tompkins Square Park. On the Upper West Side, residents say rats have “formed a conga line” in Verdi Square (née Needle Park) on 72nd Street. Local TV crews have run outraged exclusives about rats living across from the Plaza Hotel. Rats were even threatening celebrity homes in Greenwich Village, menacing luminaries like Michael Cera and Rupert Everett, forcing Gisele Bündchen to raise her skirt in fear. At one downtown firehouse, rats were getting into the FDNY cars and eating away the wires under the dashboards. Knowing that rodent gnawing is responsible for an estimated quarter of electrical failures in the city, the firefighters employed infrared cameras to locate the rats, which they attempted to beat to death with hockey sticks. Perhaps even more vivid was the action taken in August by Jose Rivera, a city employee at the Marcy projects in Bed-Stuy, who used a pitchfork to kill a three-foot-long rat (possibly an alien rat from Africa, an escaped pet). Asked by a reporter if Jay-Z, Marcy’s most famous alum, would rap about Rivera’s feat, a project resident said, “He ought to … ‘Pitchfork, bitchfork, Marcy with the monster rat, sometime it be like that.’ ”

Vermin videos have gone viral, collected by sites like Gothamist, which specializes in the rats-on-subway genre. Callow suburbanites seem to never get enough of the rat crawling on the face of the homeless guy, but the less heartless may prefer “Rat With Full Slice of Pizza.” “Rat on the A Train” isn’t bad either. In this climate, exterminators, now generally referred to as pest-­management professionals (PMPs), are reality-show stars. Animal Planet’s Rat Busters NYC tracks the undeniably amusing peregrinations of Jimmy Tallman and Michael Morales, who in their quest to become the most famous rat-catchers since Hamelin are photographed crawling around Queens attics saying things like “Holy cow! Look at those droppings.”

The ongoing rodent scare has proved a headache for the Bloomberg administration, especially since the announced layoff of 57 (out of 185) Health Department pest-control workers last year. “You don’t slash the ranks of public-health workers on the front lines of an epidemic,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer at a protest in Mitchell Square Park in Washington Heights, where locals claimed the rats had “taken over.” Last month, members of the subway-workers union circulated a petition against the cutbacks, shouting, “If you smell something, sign something.” For his part, Mayor Bloomberg has pooh-poohed the outbreak as just one more thing the 99 percent of us will have to put up with in these austere times. “Rats are a problem in every big city,” a peevish mayor told a TV reporter. This was in sharp contrast to the reaction of then-mayor Rudolph ­Giuliani when faced with a “Rat Summit” during a similar rodent panic in 2000.

Giuliani (who once famously told a ­ferret-keeping citizen to get help for his “excessive concern for little weasels”) declared, “We make unprecedented efforts to kill rats. We probably lead the country in rat killing.”

All of this brings up a number of questions, ones that have vexed city health officials at least since the rodent scare of the twenties, when scientists proposed to build a wall around the rat-infested waterfront area. For instance, just how many New York rats are there in New York? For decades, the rule of thumb was one rat for every human, i.e., 8 million rats, an iconic yet mind-­boggling number. Following the Second World War, David E. Davis (called “the founding father of modern rat studies” by Robert Sullivan in his esteemed 2004 book, Rats) challenged the one-to-one ratio. After much field work, Davis concluded there were no more than 250,000 rats in New York, or one rodent for every 36 people.

Since then, however, there seems little doubt that the rat population, spurred by ever more garbage for the rodents to eat, has increased, perhaps dramatically. You hear all sorts of numbers. One PMP told me there were “three, maybe four” rats for every person. “Thirty-two million rats?” I asked. “Well, at least 20 million,” the PMP replied. No one knows for sure, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how many rats you see.

That is because, as Steven Bruce of the Superb Pest Control company of the Bronx says, “one rat is a lot to see … because they’re rats.”

It was true, Bruce said, that the Great Bedbug Panic had kept him busy over the past couple of years. This is largely because, as many PMPs allow, “paranoia is good for business.” Pictured as a creeping army of microscopic vampires capable of lurking in even Bloomingdale’s-bought 1,000-thread-count sheets, bedbugs, or even a rumor of them, are enough to make whole neighborhoods scratch through their skin and throw bedroom sets onto the street. But when it came down to it, a high percentage of people driven crazy by tiny demons had no bedbugs at all. “One of the hardest parts of my job is convincing them they don’t have them,” says Lee Browning of Discovery Dogs, a firm that uses pint-size terriers to sniff out the insects. A good PMP often had to turn psychologist, nudge people down from the ledge. Bedbugs were the perfect post-9/11 pest; they carried an alien, unknowable claustrophobia of dread, but since they were predictably wiped out by the application of 115-degree heat, many vermin-hunters found them dull, offering little intellectual challenge.

That was why there was “something about a rat job,” Bruce said as he walked through a midtown basement with his flashlight looking for “rub marks,” the dark smudges greasy-furred rats leave on walls. Unlike the faceless struggle against the bedbug, a rat job was “a battle of wits and wills. A turf war, because where they live is where we live.” Going against the rat was personal, a measure of the man, a pride fight between species.

It was something about the rat itself, the nature of the beast, the way thousands of years of proximity have produced a highly nuanced historical and cultural bond with humanity. Would any parent think of taking children to a performance of The Nutcracker featuring a Bedbug King? Is it any wonder Michael Jackson’s first No. 1 hit as a solo artist was “Ben,” theme from a movie about a telepathic, homicidal alpha rat? Rat lit is a staple of the New York writer, with this graph from Joseph Mitchell more or less summing it up. “Rats are almost as fecund as germs … a rat at four is older than a man at ninety. ‘Rats that survive to the age of four are the wisest and the most cynical beasts on earth,’ one exterminator says. ‘A trap means nothing to them, no matter how skillfully set. They just kick it around until it snaps; then they eat the bait … I believe some of them can read.’ ”


One could become obsessional about rats, I thought, thumbing through a scholarly article by the noted urban rodentologist Bobby Corrigan. A pioneer of “green” pest management and adviser to the City Health Department with a Ph.D. in rodent control from Purdue University, Corrigan did not put much credence in the suggestion that the uptick in rat sightings was a result of projects like the Second Avenue subway and the aptly named Bruce Ratner’s ­Barclays Center. “A rat isn’t going to leave his burrow unless it is directly impacted,” said the ­Brooklyn-born Corrigan. “Vibrations do not bother them. They are not leaving home because someone has a jackhammer.”

Corrigan called the present hysteria “understandable but idiotic.” The recent outbreak, he said, may only be little more than the unsettling of a few rat colonies, involving no more than 200 or 300 individuals. So this whole uproar was over a handful of rats? “It very well could be,” said Corrigan.

His point was that people are confused about rats. The fact was man “was more indebted to the Norway rat than any other species on Earth” with all those lab experiments and the lives they saved.

That was the conundrum; humans and rats were inextricably linked by time and space. History taught there was no getting rid of them. It was a Cold War, mutually-assured-destruction situation; wiping out the rats would wipe us out, too. What was needed was distance, Corrigan said. “Rats are diabolically clever animals. By that I don’t mean they’re controlled by the devil. It is just that they are very smart, very single-minded, very determined. One thing they want to do is be close to us, which is the problem, because if you allow a rat to get close to you, he will get very, very close. Closer than you want. That’s what we do, manage the distance.”

Iwas thinking about distance while wandering around looking for rats. This was embarrassing, since there are plenty of people in New York who don’t need to go out to find rats. The rats come to them. Right into their babies’ cribs. Not that I didn’t have rat stories of my own. For instance, in the winter of 1972, I was living in a storefront apartment with my sister on 6th Street between Avenues A and B. Bimbo Rivas, Loisaida poet and playwright, was my sister’s boyfriend and was around a lot. One day, Bim, a man with a sense of flair, used the five-foot-long steel-pole “police lock” to spear a scurrying Rattus norvegicus right through the belly. Toshiro Mifune couldn’t have done it better. The rat squealed a bit, but that subsided soon after Bim, with a quick flick of the pole, tossed the body out into an air shaft and closed the window.

Corrigan was right. Rats like to be close. They hug walls, seek warmth, want to be near you, if only to burrow into the subconscious, as in Freud’s famous “Rat Man” case, in which the patient was possessed by a fantasy of a chamber pot full of rodents attached to a man’s buttocks (which dovetails with the urban nightmare of the rat crawling through a toilet; check YouTube, if you want to throw up). Rats were parasites, living off human imperfection. Humanity was a race of profligate slobs who threw Doritos out the car window and were too lazy to fasten the lids on $100 pestproof trash cans. New York had more garbage than anywhere else, so we had more rats. They existed to mock us for our grandiosity and our sloth. They were our mirror, unwanted but true.

It was about then, as I sat near Collect Pond Park, that a rat appeared. I figured one would, sooner or later. Collect Pond, down the block from the Tombs, was a flash point in the rat scare. “Holy bleep, it is like a rat zoo in there,” exclaimed one video blogger. The rat approached, got within six feet of me, and stopped. This was fine. Six feet was an acceptable distance. But then the rat zigzagged around, moving closer by six inches or so. It was now within my zone.

I don’t like it when city animals act funny; it makes me think they might be rabid. But for all the diseases they spread, rats don’t get rabies. It was then I saw the Reese’s wrapper near my foot. Inside was a bit of peanut-butter cup. Rats can’t see for shit but can smell anything, and they’re crazy about peanut butter. It is like crack to them. I could see it: the rat decision-making process. Would he chance it? Make his move? It would be a mistake, because that peanut-butter cup was in my space. Lines had to be drawn. The rat, realizing I was serious, soon ran off. But he’d be back; two residents of the city, we were stuck with each other.

Read the full article here: http://nymag.com/news/features/rats-2011-11/

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