From WBC Chicago, Cisamerican Live.

Good morning, and it's a great morning for New Yorkers and a great morning to be in New York City.

We're at a press conference in a park in Harlem for New York's Mayor Adams in April last year.

There are two undisputed truths about the Adams administration. Mayor Eric Adams loves his mother. Mayor Eric Adams hates rats.

This event was to introduce New Yorkers to their brand new rat czar. This is a position the mayor created, and his job listing called for candidates who were, quote, highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty, with a swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor, and general aura of badassery. New York's mayor is not popular. He's got huge disapproval ratings on crime and homelessness. Only a fourth of all New Yorkers like the way he's doing his job. So when the mayor talks rats, it's with the joy of a dad whose kids don't want any of the dinner he's cooked them, and finally, at dessert, gets to hand them massive hop fudge sundaes. He's been a big issue.

I hear it all the time. I'm on the trains, I'm walking the streets. People stop me and say, you know, we're with you, man. We hate those damn rats. And, you know, remember Julia? Remember when I came out with that rat device? You know, I had a rat device. We caught 96 rats around Brooklyn BOrough Hall. 96 rats. And, you know, there were people that were yelling, you know, oh, you murderer.

You murderer. You know, this is the kind of cutthroat swagger in a lot of the Remarks this day. Next to the podium is a table with all kinds of gear for shooting, poisoning, and trapping rats. Soon, the new rat czar, Kathy karate, takes the stage. And if zingers could kill rodents, well, New York's in good hands. You'll be seeing a lot of me.

And a lot less rats.

There's a new sheriff in town, and with your help, we'll send those rats packing. Fully keeping with the giddy mood of the day, the ratzar's parents are there, felling for reporters and telling the story of how at ten, their daughter mobilized her entire neighborhood to fight rats. And so, so proud they can't stop themselves from talking over each other in a gush of words. I'll be honest with you, there were so many applicants. But then when she started to get.

Down, I was like I said to.

My wife, I go, I think they're gonna hire her. She's right. She's got this job. She's smart. She's super smart. She's great with. She's gonna do a great job. The mayor has made it very clear his stance on rats. He hates rats.

I hate rats.

All New Yorkers hate rats.

Wow. That is strong.

And not true.

Nah, not true. Everybody don't hate rats.

Okay, so we are going to devote our program today to rats and their hold over our cities and our mines. And for some equal time, we thought it was very important to co host today's coverage. We thought we would reach out to the one group that did not get a turn at the mic at the mayor's press conference. Welcome to you guys. So let me push this mic a little closer to you there on the floor, please.

Far away. Alrighty. 1212.

All right, you want to introduce yourselves?

I'm Reggie. I'm Rachel. We are rodents. Yeah, we're the rodent class. We are rats.

Can I see you guys? What do you make of this press conference and the mayor appointing a rat czar and announcing like rats is his mission? He's gonna kill rats.

You know, look, if I had made the same budget cuts that that guy was pitching, I'd also be trying to throw little smoking mirrors in the air. Little confusion. Confusion? Little confusion.

So you're saying it's just a distraction?

Course is an abstraction. I mean, look, you know, who's gonna fight back? Who's gonna fight back against that? We're easy. Yeah, we're small, but we're resilient. Yeah, we got the numbers. We got the numbers.

Well, actually, the numbers are interesting. It's actually a real question. Nobody knows how many rats are in New York City. It's 8 million people. But since you guys are, like, nesting everywhere, under the streets and sidewalks, and you're in ancient water pipes and utility pipes and sewers and subway tunnels, like, the best guess, like we could find from anybody, is just millions of rats. That's all they can say.

A million. So far. We're growing every day.

Well, actually, that's true. People are seeing a lot more rats in New York. Health inspectors are seeing twice as many rats as they saw just a few years ago.

And that's what you see teaches female teachers. Red rat. Let's go.

Can I ask you guys, do you see anything in the other side's arguments? Do you see anything? And why people find you to be a pest and frightening?

All right, every once and again, a kid gets bitde.

Okay, well, actually, the last year that we have stats for 100 New Yorkers got bit by rats.

You said it's 8 million. What is that? That's nothing. That's nothing. How many New Yorkers a year get stabbed? You know how many New Yorkers a year get hit by cars? How many rats control rent prices in New York? Very few. Very few of us are, you know, keeping Manhattan unaffordable, and yet somehow. Oh, rats are evil.

Yeah. Well, let me give you guys the human point of view on this, okay? In this new battle that's going on in New York between a growing rat population and a mayor calling for your blood, let me tell you about somebody who's on the front lines of where the new wave of rats has shown up. Her name is Darnice Foster. She lives just a couple blocks from the park where the mayor's press conference was held. And she saw the commotion and stopped to watch and talked to my coworker, Valerie Kipnis, told her that she's lived on 138th street since the nineties, and they never used to have a rat problem. To the Pandemic.

Rats outside the building, rats in the basement. This is new. This is. I guess nobody was. Everybody was looking the other way or doing something else, and the rats took over. I. It's very frustrating. Like, garbage collection day is the absolute worst. There's really no safe place because they're running from garbage to garbage to garbage to garbage. Even in the middle of the street, it's not safe because they dart so that you can barely walk. And you just have to hope, pray to God that they're not there. Like, I shake my keys. I make as much noise.

So Valerie and I headed to her block on garbage pickup day and met up with Darnice before her kids left for school, which is a big operation in her house. Each of her four kids goes to a different school in a different part of the city. She lives in a really pretty block in Harlem that's all townhouses and trees. It was a perfect spring morning, and as we stood there on the sidewalk. Yes. Even with the sun shining there in plain day.

Oh, God.

Jesus Christ.

A rat?

Yeah. No, I just saw the rat. I don't know where it came from, but it crawled across the top of the green can. I don't know where it went. Cause I kind of froze.

I walk over to a big plastic trash bin and look inside. There's a rat chewing through a bag. That sound was the rat. Dornice says that it's not just a general kind of post pandemic surge that's led to all the rats on her particular block, the neighborhood has been gentrifying. One house, a couple doors down sold for two and a half million dollars. Others aren't far behind. Darnie's rents in one of the only apartment buildings on the block, and she said her landlord is trying to drive everybody out of her building to raise the rents. Hot water and heat have gone out for weeks at a time.

They don't fix anything. They're harassing tenants. They have managed to harass and get half the building. So half of the tenants are gone and rats are helping their cause because they just want to clear out my building anyway.

So in New York City, rats are just a pawn in the much bigger clash that is New York real estate. We did reach out to the landlord, his name is Hamid Ali, to ask him if he's trying to drive out Darnice and the other last tenants in the building. I'm letting rats to fester as part of that, but he didn't return our calls, our texts, or our emails.

I'm really stubborn. I do not want my landlord to win. Oh, my God. Sorry. Sorry. I'm so sorry. That was humongous.

When rats scamper by, they seem to completely unnerve Darniece. And she urges me and her sons to move away from a stairwell where she's seen rats. There are certain spots where she doesn't like to stand, but her kids are totally unruffled. Her sons, Micah and Amir, they're nine and twelve, both perfectly happy to be late for school to talk rats. Each new rap we see, they're like, yeah, sure, whatever.

This one looks like it died recently.

The boy spot this one up the block and show Valerie.

Wait, how can you tell?

Because, like, it's body, their eyes are still open and, like, its body is like, still kind. It kind of looks like it's fake playing dead.

And because ants haven't swarmed that place yet.

Why don't I take a quick picture?

Do you feel like the rats have gotten into your head?

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I am thinking about them a lot.

I mean, it's just so strange because they're so small and yet they can loom so large.

They're huge. These are not small rats. These are big, fat, jolly rats. They are eating good here. Like, I'm amazed at how agile they are.

I told Denise how a scientist I talked to said that the big problem with rats these days is not that they widespread disease. She said it's rare in North America for anybody to report catching a disease from a rat. And it's much more common for rats to catch our diseases from us going through our stuff. Like, New York rats got Covid from us. And the scientist told me that the bigger problem with rats is the very thing that darnice is experiencing. The StResS feeling of Everything being out of control when rats are there. It just freaks people out. Like, there's just something about having them around that just gets to us psychologically.

It means that you've done something terribly wrong in your life, and you should correct it. If you're encountering rats, like, it's like a problem sign. It's like, stop, change, do something different.

What are they on our program? Rats. When rats show up, it is all about the rats beginning of anything else. If you've had a run in with a rat, you pretty much remember it the rest of your life. Today, we let ourselves get transfixed. Why do they get to us so much? Like I said earlier, my co hosts for the hour today are Reggie and Rachel, New York City rats. You guys have anything you want to say about Darnice's situation? You think she's wrong to be scared?

No. No. You know, she's speaking the truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's scary. But you know what? I think the fact that we're being blamed for being a bunch of beyonces, you know, is outrageous. Right? When we step in the room, all eyes on us. Yeah, all eyes. You know, we're special.

Oof.

Bars, right? You know, valid. Excuse us for shining. Sorry.

Rats.

You may think you know them. You may think you have nothing to learn. We have stories today I think will open your eyes.

Stay with us.

Dis american life. Today's show is a rerun that we're bringing back right now because New York's Mayor Adams is holding the very first national urban rat summit in three weeks in New York City. And we thought we could help everybody kind of get in the right headspace for that. And we're gonna start today's show with a story that you guys commissioned as our co host today.

Mm hmm. Yep. Because there's the lie, and there's the rat truth. That's why we're here to tell our story, which is why we got this next story for you. Act 150. 1st rats. So this might be hard for some of you close minded folks to believe, but there are a lot of people out here who love rats, love us to death, who see us for who we really are. For more, we go to NPR's Elna Baker.

Actually, she's not with NPR.

Oh, my God. Copy that. For more on this, we go to our very own Elna Baker.

I. Okay, so I wanna start from the beginning. You and I, we met at a party, right?

Yep.

You came up to me and you basically did this thing where you were like, hey, you're a woman. Can I get your opinion on something? And then you explained your predicament. Will you explain for us now? What's your current big dilemma?

Yes, I have several pet rats, and I also am single and used to be a very active dating in the dating scene. And I want to either. I have to either get rid of my rats so that I can start dating again or, I guess, become a weird, lonely rat person for the rest of my life. I don't know if that's like. It seems like those are the two options, and the fact that I'm weighing that decision is probably not a good sign. That should be a pretty easy choice. I would think that a couple years ago it would have been an easy choice for me, but all of a sudden, it's not.

And at the party, you turned to me after explaining all of this, and you said, is me being a rat guy a deal breaker?

And you emphatically said yes.

Yes. Because it's not just that Todd has rats. That's his name, by the way. Todd. He has twelve. They roam free all day, and they've taken over his living room, where he's set up an american gladiator style obstacle course with tiny ropes for the rats to swing from furniture. If this were a Disney movie, it'd be magical. But if Todd were your tinder date, you'd report his profile. A little about Todd. He's 39, a writer living in LA. He's tall, attractive, says he wants to find a real relationship and settle down. According to his friends, he's really broken up over this choice, constantly telling them he's going to get rid of the rats, but unable to pull the trigger, he's truly at a crossroads. Obviously, I have a strong bias for which road I think he should take. The kind of road that when you're walking a rat, doesn't suddenly come scurrying out, brushing against your feet. And the only thing I didn't understand, why was this so hard for him? Okay, so just help me. Walk me through it. So how did it start with the rats?

I think that the rats, in a weird way, I think everybody has at least one weird thing that they got into during the pandemic. For some people, it was like knitting or like, you know, a weird japanese tv show. For me, it was, you know, having a bunch of pet rats.

Wait, so I see. So basically you're saying this decision could only have happened during the pandemic?

100%. Before the pandemic, I was not what you would call a rat person. I spent ten years living in New York. I thought rats were pests, not pets. Like, they are, like, slightly above or below bed bugs, I guess, on, like, the New York things you don't ever want in your apartment list. It was probably three weeks into the first lockdown. I was going on a walk, and when I got home, in the parking lot to my apartment, there was. I saw this little, tiny, cute little rat, and he was crawling. It wasn't, like, scampering away. He was crawling, and his back legs weren't working. He was kind of, like, dragging his body with his front little arms. It was like. It almost looked like out of saving private Ryan. Like, just like a wounded soldier trying to carry himself to safety. And I felt so bad. It was, like, one of the saddest things I'd ever seen, combined with also being super lonely and locked down and just going on a super introspective walk. And I was like, I'm gonna save this rat. I'm gonna bring this rat upstairs. I'm gonna nurse it back to health.

Todd put on a pair of gloves, picked up the rat, put it in a box, did the icky dance, then went upstairs.

The first thing that happened is I called the Humane Society. Cause I was like, I'll take care of this rat until they can take him in. Thinking I would do that the next morning. And they were like, immediately, the girl on the phone was like, yeah, we don't do anything with rats. I can call animal control to get rid of it if you want, but we don't do anything for rats.

Wait, the humane society is like, ew, no rats?

Yeah, at least the one in LA. They are not very humane.

The woman was humane enough to give him the number of a rat rescue. He calls and talks to a woman named Shannon, who says she'd love to take his rats, but she can't for ten days. Cause she's out of town.

She's like, can you handle it till then and keep it alive? I was like, yeah, of course I can. Like, knowing nothing about rats or anything, but I was like, awesome. We got a project now. Let's do it.

Because of the pandemic, Todd had lost his job. He spent most days sitting at home with his wheels spinning. So project keep rat alive until Shannon gets home became his new focus. TOdd was in luck, though. The rat he took home wasn't a street rat. It was a discarded Pet RAT. While they're the same species, the difference between street RaTS and Pet RATS is similar to wolves versus dogs. StIll, the first night did not go well. Todd was afraid of the RAT, and it seemed afraid of him. It escaped the cardboard box it was in multiple times. But quickly, Todd went from being grossed out to engrossed. He'd google, why does my rat do this? And lose himself for hours reading all sorts of Rat Behavioral studies?

Also, every Pet RAT is different because they all have different personalities, much like people. And so you'll go on the RaT Reddit, or Radit, as it's called Google.

Or to look up rat it.

It's called rat it. They got a good one. They locked that down pretty good. It was a real crash course into learning about everything about rats. Like, you have to get it a buddy. Basically, they hate being alone. They get LONELY and depressed. And so immediately, I was like, okay, I got to get another RAT for, like, ten days. Or at this point, it was, like, eight. And so I went on Craigslist and started looking up rats for sale. So I found a guy who was selling rats for, like, $3 apiece, and I went to that dude's house, and he's like, okay, here's the two rats I have. Which one do you want? And there's two little cute rats and, like, a little fish tank THIng. And I was like, I don't care. Like, you know, which one do you not want? He's LiKe, well, it doesn't matter to me. I'm just gonna feed the other one to my snake. And I was like, well, now I don't want the other rats blood on my hands. Like, I'll just buy them both. So at that point, I had three rats, and obviously, very quickly, I was becoming like, they were definitely my best friends and my only friends, because, again, it was lockdown.

And so at the point that this lady Shannon got back from visiting her family and was ready to take the original rat in to her rodent rescue, I no longer wanted to give him up. And, in fact, she was not surprised that my rat culture had already multiplied to three. And she's like, that's how it happens. And then I was like, no way. She's like, yeah. Like, I.

She literally says, that's how it happens.

Oh, yeah. She was laughing. She was like, yeah, that's literally every rat owner. Like, you start with one, and then all of a sudden, you have a ton.

She tells him about another rodent rescue where he can get even more rats.

Todd says, I think I'm okay with three. Shannon, thanks a lot. I hang up the phone immediately. Go on Instagram, look at the South Bay rodent rescue. And later that day, I had two more rats. I was up to five, and I'm pretty sure I want to say later that week, we got to eight. If you added up all the rats I've had between the ones that have died and the ones that got foster, I feel like I probably have, like, 35 rats at this point, which is pretty insane.

35 rats? Actually, it was 37. There's Claude, Pearl, Arthur, Marceau, birdie, Lucy, Henry, Bobby, Caesar, Leonard, Oliver, Harriet, Luke, Amanda, Julian, Roger, Ricky, Bowe, Penelope, sweetloo, Dave, Kelsey, Alonzo, Ebenezer, Eddie, Beth, Sven, Osmo, Jake, Delilah, Klaus, Aldous, Stair, Eleanor, Gertie, Joshua, Heidi, and Peter. He didn't have them all at once. Rats only live a few years, so the most he's ever had at one time was 14. When I've told friends about Todd's rats, they've asked me, is he okay? Like, is he having a breakdown or anything? And the answer is emphatically no. He's fine. But he just lost his job, and he was having a hard time getting motivated to find another one in the pandemic job market. And besides, how could he? He was so busy falling in love with rats. I see rats as vermin, carriers of disease. Just thinking of them skeeves me out. But Todd says, I just don't know them. Like a proud parent, he told me things about rats that converted him, and I gotta say, I actually had no idea how intelligent these animals could be. That's part of what hooked Todd.

He observed, rats are, like, obsessed with what we know about what they know. Like, they never want us to know what they know. There's, like, the mind game level. It's, like, CIA level mind games of, like, they want to make us keep us in the dark about whatever information they have or whatever they know how to do. So, like, they're very secretive. They love hiding stuff and stashing stuff, and they never want to be caught doing anything naughty. Right.

In the beginning, Todd would give of his rats treats, which they'd take and stash in hiding spots all over his apartment. Every night, he'd have to clean 20 to 25 little stashes. Todd started to get suspicious. He was giving them treats, but not this many treats. So he set up a gopro, facing the treat drawer to find out what was happening. Sure enough, the rats had figured out how to open the treat drawer by standing underneath it and pushing it open. As a team, they'd steal treats, then close it shut. Todd immediately moved the treats up to the middle drawer. The next day, he came into the kitchen. The middle drawer was open and all the treats were gone. He reviewed the GoPro footage to try to figure out what happened.

Come to find out that three of them had figured out that if they wedged them so the oven is next to this cabinet, if they wedged themselves against the oven with their little tiny fingers, they were able to kind of like, just wedge in between the drawer and get it out just enough that then they could stick their face in, use their face to wedge it out more. And then all of a sudden, they were able to climb into this middle drawer and start stealing food again. But then they figured out that they can't close the second drawer because there's no way to push it closed. They'd been closing the bottom drawer.

Oh, and if it's not closed, then that means they're caught.

Now you're. Now you're totally caught. So then I. I don't know what little rat meeting they had, but they somehow came up with the idea that instead of getting caught with the second drawer open and that they'd been stealing food, they would take all of the food and treats from the second drawer and put it back into the first drawer, the bottom drawer. So then hopefully when I would find it, I would think that they were, like, helping me put it back in the correct drawer.

Todd opens the bottom drawer and the treats are all there. Another thing I learned talking to Todd about rats is that they can jump incredibly high like bunnies. Todd learned this when he set up his goPro to figure out how his rats were getting into these high cubbies. The footage showed they were crawling onto the kitchen table and launching themselves 4ft in the air. Todd knows their secret, but they don't know he knows. A few days later, he wakes up.

And I walked into the living room and I saw Claude and he was running over to go do this. And then he kind of stopped and froze. He had been busted doing something naughty. And he walked up to the edge of the table and I looked at him and he kind of turned and looked at me, and then he turned and looked at the cubbies and then he turned and looked at me again. And then he jumped, like, straight up, just like a couple, like the saddest little jump and just belly flopped onto the ground. He essentially tried to trick me into thinking that he could not make this jump, that, like, very easily could be done. And I have seen them do now on camera many, many times. I was like, did that just happen? Like, did this rat just try to trick me into thinking he couldn't do something I know he can do?

I talked to a rodent behavior specialist about all of this. He says Todd's got it mostly right. He wouldn't go so far as to say the rats were trying to trick Todd, but he said that rats know what will or won't get them treats from their owner, and they'll behave accordingly. What Todd is reading as intent is actually the nuance with which the rats can read the cues he's giving. I was surprised when the rodent guy told me how perceptive they are. If you're stressed, a rat can smell that. They also study your posture. They read your facial expressions. They can detect things about us that we can't even see in each other. And they're social animals. If you like them and aren't trying to kill them, they want to play all day.

They enjoy it, which Todd noticed it was nonstop entertainment. They are always up to something, and also, they're so loving. They're just like, they're one of the most loving creatures you could ever have as a pet. They just are obsessed with you. It's like, wait.

This is the side of rats I do not know about. No one talks about rats. They're so loving. So can you just. I need you to. I need you to convince me that that's true.

That's fair. That's totally understandable. But as far as, like, their loving nature is, like, they just, like, constantly wanna come cuddle and kiss you and give you little licks, and, like, this is so. I fully admit that, like, I am, like, pretty far off the deep end into, like, pet rat ownership, but there's still, like, another level that I haven't, like, sunk to yet, which is, like, a lot of people let their rats, like, clean their teeth and stuff, which is, like, disgusting to me. But rats love to groom you, because that is, like, hugging and kissing. I think that I got a lot of book readers right now. They just always want to get in my nose and try to clean my boogers, which is like, dude, stop. That is disgusting.

You have a line.

Oh, yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. I will not let them clean my teeth or boogers. Or the ear thing is, like, I don't want them crawling inside my ear, but it is really cute when they try to. Cause you hear their little squeaks and sniffs, and that's pretty cute. But then once they start trying to get into your ear to clean it, it's like, dude, stop. That's disgusting.

The idea of Todd being groomed by rats brings me back to his predicament. When does the thought, okay, I need to get rid of these rats if I want to have love and a relationship. When does that occur to you?

Yeah. So for me, I feel like as the pandemic started, kind of, like, actually winding down a bit. I think, like, post, like, the last variant, it felt like things were opening up again. People were, you know, I was going to parties again for the first time in a while and, like, meeting people at parties, and, like, I think I was at a friend's party and the moment kind of occurred. I was. I met a girl at this party, and we really hit it off, and we were flirting, and then we exchanged numbers, and then she. We kind of kept talking, and then she inquired about potentially getting a drink. So we had a drink after this party, and then as things were winding down and the bar was closing, you know, I think, like, anybody, you fall into old habits and you're like, okay, do you want to go back to my place? And she's like, yeah. And like, it was like a kaiser Soze moment where all of a sudden, in my head, I was like, oh, my God, wait a minute. I have at that point, twelve rats in my apartment. Like, it had not, it not even occurred to me.

Like, I can't bring this person home to an apartment full of rats. I was like, the first thing that rushed through my mind is like, how do I explain this to her? To preface this, before we go to my apartment, and, like, very quickly, I was like, there is no way to explain having twelve rats in your apartment.

They were in his car. On the way home, Todd turns to.

The woman and says, actually, I'm really sorry I lied and said, I'm actually really, really tired and I have an early morning tomorrow. And so, like, this girl probably thought, like, I was like, you know, like, not that into her having second thoughts, when in reality it's because I didn't want to expose her to a rat filled apartment.

He takes her back to her car, and they never see each other again.

I remember laying in bed that night being like, well, this is probably the end of, like, rat ownership. Like, if we're gonna be, like, meeting people again, life is kind of starting to get back to normal. This is not something that you can explain to somebody.

Todd's tried to get rid of the rats, posted them online, but then every time, he ends up backing out at the last minute. So much so that he's been banned from multiple online La rat groups.

Three and a half weeks ago, I had a woman who was coming to adopt them who, like, I feel really bad. She drove all the way from Simi Valley and, like, a half hour before, and I was like, I'm so sorry, I can't do this. Like, I gotta keep them. I'm really, really sorry. I offered to, like, venmo her for her gas, but she was like, no, don't worry about it. Whatever. But, yeah, it's really hard to get rid of them. I've tried quite a bit. It's tough.

Oh, man, I don't think you're gonna be able to do it.

I know, but I have to.

There's gotta be a way. Why do you have to?

This is definitely not a sustainable way of living life.

Todd told me he was planning on getting rid of all of his rats within a month. Okay. Hi, Todd.

Hi.

SO. All right, so it's been four months since we last talked.

Has it really been four months?

It's been four months. Well, minus, like, a few days. I'm dying to know, have you given away the rats?

I have not. I have. I feel, like, made some progress in that. I have committed to not getting any more rats or any new rats, which I think is a big step, a first step. I'm down to three now, unfortunately.

You're down to the past three rats?

DOWN to three rats, yeah.

Since Todd got most of them around the same time, many of them died around the same time, it's been hard. He's actively restraining himself when he has the urge to get more rats.

That takes discipline.

What was the closest you came?

Like, a week ago, man, there was a really cute rat video. There was a rat, like, a week ago that CAme from the same breed as ONE of my favorite rats. My first rat, Claude, that died, that was just like, oh, he's the cutest and best little rat. And there was, like, a really cute video that one of the rodent rescues posted. And I was like, yeah, he's up for adoption. I was like, man, four. Isn't that different than three? Maybe I'll just get, like, one more, and then, like, see where that goes. But he was a young rat. I was like, if I get a fourth one that's young, then I'm gonna have to get him a buddy. When the other three die, and then now we're two. And then, like, you know where this goes from there? Like, it's just, like, it spirals out of control pretty quickly.

So why is he finally letting go of his rats? What changed? After our first call, he started opening up to women on dating apps about his rat ownership. To his surprise, at least half were totally cool with it. He even brought four dates home to meet the rats. It went great. This huge obstacle he'd invented, rats or love. It wasn't actually a problem, which made him look at why he was so embarrassed about being a rat guy in the first place.

I think I was more embarrassed and ashamed of being, in general, who I was and where I was at that point. Obviously, like, the pandemic, like, just like, everything that my identity was wrapped around had been paused. Like, I love those rats, do not get me wrong, and they are super fun. But I think also you could argue that I was using rat ownership as a way of avoiding addressing other problems in life, because that's the double whammy, is like, okay, I'm not pouring all this time into this weird hobby. That means I do have to pour it into getting my career back on track, addressing my personal life, addressing my love life, and actually taking those things serious. I don't have this great excuse anymore.

To avoid them, Todd's taking steps to move towards a life without rats. He's taken down all the paintings and pictures the rats chewed the edges of and is replacing them with new art. The rats destroyed all his plants. He's buying new ones, and he's been going out on lots of dates. He feels hopeful about his new life, though he did say when he's out buying new plants, maybe he'll see a new ratified and get that, too.

ELMa BAker, she's a producer on this show and a real one to uS. Rats.

Coming up, no country for old rats. We visit a vast place that has somehow gotten rid of rats.

That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

This american life from our glass. Today's program must be rats on the brain. My co host today, New York street rats, Reggie and Rachel.

Hello. Hey, we're here.

Oh, you guys. Welcome back to the second half. We have arrived at act two of our program, act two, the Big Bag Theory. So the mayor of New York and his new rat czar have declared this renewed war on rats that we talked about at the beginning of the show, this war that's supposedly going to be way more effective and lethal. But one thing about the entire project that seems kind of absurd is that one big reason that there are so many rats in New York City is just obvious. It's completely out in the open. It's not complicated at all.

That's right. It's racism. Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, it's plastic bags. Yeah.

Excuse me? Yeah, the plastic bags. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

That's the thing. New Yorkers put out their garbage in plastic bags. And if you've ever visited the city for more than a day, you've seen these. They're on the sidewalk at night. Just huge stacks of them just stretching down the block. It's about 8 million pounds of food waste every day. That's one pound for every man, woman, child, and nonbinary person in the five boroughs. And it is also a lot of rat food.

It's like a buffet on every block. And you're saying, oh, no, don't eat the buffet food.

And is it very hard tearing into a plastic garbage bag?

No. Is it hard to walk?

All right, all right. Point taken. Okay, so why. Why. Why would the biggest city in the country decide to do something so absurd and counterproductive? One of our producers, Ike Srizkandaraja, looked into that.

It wasn't always this way. New Yorkers used to take out their trash in Oscar, the grouch style metal cans with tightly fitting lids. The cans were ubiquitous, mostly worked, but nobody liked them. Here's how you used to have to take out the trash. You'd put your raw refuse in a metal can. A sanitation worker would drag it to the back of the truck, banging it loudly to empty it out, where New Yorkers, many without hoses, were left to clean out their smelly metal cans. It wasn't great. Then, in the late sixties, the future arrived. America put a man on the moon.

And here's the answer, folks. New glad trash bags. They're owner proof, scatterproof, so strong they're leak proof.

It's the end of trashy trash.

That's neat.

Plastic trash bags were mass produced. For the first time, New York City Mayor John Lindsay saw an opportunity for an easy political win. He called a press conference on May 8, 1969, reporters gathered in the blue room at city hall. A garbage bag hung on the wall, and Mayor Lindsay announced plans for a new experimental program that would allow New Yorkers in half a dozen neighborhoods to drop trash bags directly on the curb overnight. The mayor said he wanted to see if paper and plastic garbage bags could reduce noise, odor, litter, speed up garbage collection and improve conditions for sanitation workers. The sanitation union was all in, but not everyone was so glad. Bobby Corrigan remembers where he was. These days, he's a world renowned rodentologist. But back then, he was taking an intro to pest management class at SUNY Farmingdale. His professor asked the class to consider the mayor's recent announcement.

I remember him giving us a lesson about that event, and he said, I want you to write a homework lesson. What do you think this is going to do for the rat population of the city to put trash in plastic bags? What will this do?

Even the students in pest control 101 could tell what would happen.

The writing was on the wall that if we do this, we're going to be literally as if it was a zoological garden. We're going to try to grow these animals.

For some reason, Bobby thinks back on this moment. Often in the TerminAtoR version of this movie, which would be called X TerminAtor, the human survivors of new Rat City would send BObby back to dive in front of the podium and knock the bag out of MAYOR LiNDSAY's hand.

If I was there sitting in the audience or any pest professional, we all would have went, whoa, whoa.

Stop.

We have questions back here in the back row.

Stop. Stop.

My message would have. I would have stood up and say, this is going to be a colossal mistake in public health and a colossal mistake in quality of life, and it needs to be stopped and rethink this whole thing with different approaches.

How pivotal was this moment in the history of the new YoRK CItY rat population?

I think. I think it was everything. I think it put this animal into hyperdrive.

He calls this the big bang theory or the big bag theory, because he's funny. Right before the bags in 1969, another respected rodentologist named Joe Brooks did a survey and found that rats were only in 11% of New York. Now Bobby says rats are in 80% to 90% of the city. So did anyone in charge see this coming? If a bunch of undergrads in an entry level, best class could tell, couldn't the people running the city? Fortunately, one of the men who brought plastic bags to New York is still alive. Jerry Kretschmer is now 88. Back then, he was acting sanitation commissioner. Gerry might be one of the last people left who can tell us definitively, did they have any idea that plastic bags would lead to a rat pocalypse in 1971?

Let's just say if somebody would show me a plastic bag, I would think that's easy to fill, that's easy to pick up, and it's easy to collect. Those are the things that I would have thought about it. I wouldn't have thought that rats could eat them, because that wasn't what I was concerned with. My concern is collecting the garbage.

Is that trade off worth it?

I don't know if it's worth it. My story is, we gotta get the garbage collected.

Rats were not on Jerry's radar at all. He was busy removing millions of pounds of garbage from the city every day, which, by the way, is kind of a miracle. And bags, they made that massive job faster. 20% faster. Where the city saw efficiency, big bag saw dollar signs. Bag makers primed the public by donating 600,000 sacks, and even got to help pick the guy who evaluated the pilot project. At the initial press conference, that guy claimed that bags would reduce the smell so much that they wouldn't attract rats. Which, as any New Yorker who has walked past a pile of black bags baking under the hot sun can tell you, is just a total lie. In January 1971, the city council unanimously voted to approve the use of plastic bags in all five boroughs of New York. Cans were out, bags were in, and the party began. Oh, to be a New York City rat in the 1970s. Fast forward to 2023.

I don't think you're going to find an administration that is more serious about containers and placing our garbage in containers like we are.

That, of course, is Mayor Eric Adams.

And.

And the big thing he and his new rat czar are doing to take back the city from rats is to get trash bags back in trash cans. But Adams is putting millions of dollars into a new pilot that undoes Mayor Lindsay's pilot. It puts trash into sleek, modern bins. It's ambitious, bold. But here's why it might not work. The new containers need to be picked up more often, daily or even twice a day. This would require hiring more sanitation workers and buying new special side loading trucks. Could cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade. And then there's the parking spots. To make the plan work, the city would need to place the containers in 150,000 parking spots, up to 25% of spots in some neighborhoods. So are New Yorkers willing to give up their parking in order to beat back rats?

I don't want to give up a parking spot.

It's hard enough to find a parking spot.

You can't get a spot as it is around here, just when you come home at night. Forget about it.

I'd rather get rid of the rat problem. That's much more important.

I mean, this is a walking city.

So, you know, it's easy.

Give up the spots.

Give up the spots.

150,000.

Where they gonna park in Jersey? You're asking like, a very, two very intense things in New York.

Finding a spot to park but not.

Wanting problems with a rat, that is 150,000.

You gotta make sacrifices.

You gotta make sacrifices. But that means people gotta spend more money going to, like, parking garages. Oh, that's, I'm gonna have to say no.

I don't care at all.

Same like, it doesn't affect me.

Yeah, I don't think I care. I don't think I care whatsoever.

Parking spots aren't affecting me.

It was mixed, pretty much split. Humans are a house divided rats. Theyre united. They know what they need to do. Thats why theyre winning.

Im Chris Khandaraja. Hes the producer on our show. This July, a year after we first ran that story, Mayor Adams unveiled New York Citys official plastic trash bins to replace plastic bags. Every residential building in the city with fewer than ten apartments will have to use them by 2026. He said that getting plastic bags off the street is the key to reducing the city's rat population.

Act three, Alberta. More like El Moider. A lot of rats.

All right, so, Daley, everywhere there are people, there are rats. They thrive living off our agriculture and our garbage. They've followed us. Wherever we've settled, we followed you.

Come on, Nas. Hey, hey. He's the main character.

So you're saying it's more of a partnership?

Absolutely. Goodbye.

Well, I'm just saying that as people spread around the globe like rats, most of the rats that are across New York and across America, they started in China and Mongolia, right?

That's right. Mongolia. And then got to Europe. And then, you know, we got on the boats and just headed out to everywhere, you know, everywhere the Europeans went, the rats went.

That's actually the truth. And if you want to find places where there aren't rats, you basically have to go to places where there are no people. Like Antarctica. There are islands here and there. But there is one big exception to all this, the largest place of human habitation where there are no rats. Alberta, Canada. Alberta, Canada is a province of Canada, roughly the size of CaLifornia and Oregon combined. That's bigger than France. And it's done something that humans elsewhere have failed at completely. They have no rats. How is that possible? How'd they do it?

We are a couple miles west of the Saskatchewan border. It's kind of like the front line, I guess. And there's no doubt that's where the rats show up.

I'm riding through the Alberta countryside with rat Inspector Jory Hoffmande. It's green and mostly flat, open space that, to an AmerIcan like me, looks very midwestern. Farm after farm and the towns near the border are tiny George, 29, a straight talking guy who volunteers at the fire department and small town events in a t shirt, jeans, and baseball cap. His feelings about this line of work are uncomplicated.

I like my job. I like the outdoors. So spray weeds, go look for rats, something new every day. I'm an everyday farmer, so I enjoy it.

Rat hunting is just five weeks in the spring and fall for him. When he's not doing that, he's working the farm his family's had for five generations near here. He knows most of the farmers here along the border. Also in the truck is Karen Wickerson, who runs AlBertA's rat control program. She explains that AlBErtA's campaign against rats began decades ago. If you picture for a second, okay, rats arrive on the east coast of North America and then slowly spread west across the continent and in Canada. What that means is they infiltrate QUEbec province, and then they move west to Ontario province, the Manitoba province. Karen says they reach Saskatchewan province, surprisingly not that long ago, around 1920.

And it took them 30 years to move across the province to get to the Alberta SaskatcheWan border. And essentially, we saw the rats coming, and so were able to mobilize and be ready for when they arrived.

That day CAme in 1950. People in Alberta looked across the border of Saskatchewan and saw that rats were infiltrating farms and eating crops. AlbERtA is a big agricultural province, and AlbeRTans were like, nope, we dont want the rats.

And therefore they were declared a pest so that every Albertan was responsible for controlling them. And they actively went out and educated people as well, because people didnt know what rats looked like. They had rats taxidermied and put in all the local agricultural field offices just so that they could see what a rat actually looked like.

The asset decided to set up a rat control zone, kind of a DMZ for rats, where they'd catch the vermin trying to infiltrate the pristine province to ravage their crops. The zone runs along the border with SAskatchewan, north to south, over 300 miles, 18 miles wide. That's where we are right now in this truck. Twice a year, KarEn has 13 people that go out to Inspect every farm and every spot where rats might nest. Jory's in a spring inspection today. He turns his truck into a driveway of a farm. We see four big steel grain bins and some farm equipment in the yard. Okay, we're pulling into where.

Just a very suspect area. I've had an infestation at this yard before, so there was hundreds here inside this burning pit.

We climb out of the truck to see if the rats have returned. The burning pit is 8ft or 10ft deep and the length of a good sized swimming pool with a tangle of stuff sticking up that the farmer wants to set ablaze and get rid of. There's dead trees, barbed wire fencing, cow bones.

Yeah. So what we're doing here, we're just gonna walk around this burning pit and we're looking on the edges for. For holes. Rat runs. Like, you can tell they use the same track over and over, so you can tell where they've been.

Now, Jerry, you're climbing down. What are you pointing at?

There's a hole there.

Could be old, that hose around three inches around.

Yep. Yeah. Could be a rat, could be new, a gopher, a weasel or anything.

We spot dozens of other holes, big and small, but no signs of life. No rat feces or food by the holes, Jory concludes there are probably no rats here. We go into other farms. We're usually in and out in just a few minutes. Look around. Some bales of barley or oats, open doors to steel grain bins. The fact that we find zero rats, that's typical. Joey has 500 locations he inspects and the number of actual infestations he discovers. Like a real nest with dozens or.

Hundreds of rats once every two years.

So. So it's a bad infestation once every two years. And then how many other times will you find a rat? Let's say in a year, like last.

Year, I found one. One solo. And probably none the year before that. Maybe none the year before that.

There must be a part of you where you kind of wish, like, you hope you find something. So you have something to do.

Yeah. So you have to remind yourself sometimes why you're doing it because it can get fairly dry. Like, you're just. I've been to all these yards so many times in my life, it's the same thing every time.

This is the dirty secret of the world's most effective rat control program. They have done such a good job that at this point, it's kind of boring. Jori and Karen both use that word. It's like Doria is Batman, and every night he goes out looking for criminals and never, ever finds them. Though I should say it took them a long time to get to this point. Back in the first years of the program in the 1950s, Karen says the teams would discover 600 infestations a year in the rat control zone along the border. By the 1960s, they still needed 250 pest control officers to fan out and kill rats. Today, like I said, it's just 13 people instead of 600 infestations a year. It'll be just two to five. Take it in a second. Just two to five infestations and over 300 miles of border. One thing that helps them keep the numbers low. I thought this was interesting is the death of the family farm in Canada. Just like in the US, so many small farmers have gone out of business over the last half century. The remaining farms are really far apart. So if rats go away and feed or supplies and then land on a farm, it's hard for them to migrate to a neighbor.

Consolidation of farms hasn't just been bad for small farmers, it's been bad for rats.

Then when you find some, it's exciting when you find some.

To get a sense of just how monotonous Joey's job usually is when he talks about the last big infestation he cleaned at, it's especially memorable because instead of using poison, which is the normal way to handle it, the landowner is the one who discovered the rats. They told jury, why don't you come out and bring a shotgun?

They had me out and they supplied all the bullets, all the shotgun shells. I brought my shotgun out and my other three friends, and we'd shoot stand in a horseshoe. It's kind of like you're shooting clay pigeons or skeet, if you know what that is.

Yeah.

And they just go running out of the holes and you get time to shoot them and then reload. It was a ton of fun. Four good friends and four shotguns. And, yeah, that was. That was a great day.

It was my first infestation, too, that. Yeah, yeah. I had just started being mentored by my predecessor, so it was pretty exciting that I actually got to go out and see rats on my first day.

That was about three years ago. When Karen talks about what was so great about this, she says a sentence you cannot imagine a New Yorker uttering in the same tone of voice.

I actually got to see live rats.

I told jury I was worried that people would hear his glee over shooting rats and think he's a monster. He said it was actually a quicker death than poison, probably less painful. Of course, if you truly want to keep Alberta rat free, you can't just patrol the border. Stray rats can hitch a ride in a truck or a cardinal land in Calgary or Edmonton or one of the other big cities or towns in the middle of the province. When that happens, and it does happen, Albertans are supposed to notify Karen's office. There used to be a phone number you could call if you spot a rat, dead or alive, anywhere in the province. But Karen streamlined the process by creating an email address so people could just shoot a photo of the suspect critter and send it to her. Back in the truck, she pulled out her phone and opened an email folder overfilled with hundreds of rodent pics.

I got a couple on Friday, a couple on Thursday. So this photo here, this is pretty typical. I have. I know right away when I look at it, it is a muskrat.

A muskrat is not a rat. It's bigger, puffier. But Karen says she faces a funny problem from Albertans reporting rats.

Albertans don't know if you've lived in Alberta your whole life, you've never seen a ratified. So identifying it is pretty hard.

In 2023, of the 449 reports that Karen got, only 23 were rats. The official stats actually list the others as non rats. Sometimes, of course, people do bring in rats intentionally to the province as pets. But in Alberta, that is breaking the law. And now and then Albertans will drop a dime or rat pet owners, even on people they know.

To me, like, sometimes it can be a bad breakup and this has happened and, yeah, so people have been ratted out to me.

And in this case, it was an ex boyfriend who ratted out his ex. She was not happy about this. Karen did what she does in these cases. She gives you a week to find your rat a home in another province. If you don't succeed, they euthanize your pet. Whenever anybody tries to estimate how much money Alberta saves by having no rats, the numbers are in the tens of millions. That's crops that weren't eaten and infrastructure that wasn't degraded. And the cost each year to keep rats out of Roberta? Shockingly low. Roughly $380,000, which is less than the price of one New York City garbage truck. The low cost and Alberta's success keeping out rats is partly thanks to some lucky geography, Karen says. Namely, they only have to patrol one border. Rats don't come in from the west because there are mountains and rats apparently don't cross mountains. They don't come up from the US because Karen says it's too far between food sources and they don't come down from the north because it's too cold for rats up there. There. Okay. So the humans of Alberta have banded together in a civic minded mission that no other members of our species have been as successful at.

I was very interested to find out. Is that a big deal to Albertans? Do they feel a sense of achievement? Do they feel a sense of pride about that? Excuse me, are you from Alberta? My producer Ella and I approached Albertans on a drizzly day outside a compound full of animals that they do allow into the province. We were at the zoo. No, there was no rat exhibit. We checked and we asked everybody to name the things that make Alberta special and different, wondering how many of them would mention their epic ratlessness. Here's what they said.

They're national parks. Cost of living.

The scenic routes are much more closer than you think. Diversity lately?

Gas prices. This is the land of oil and gas, I guess.

Notice what nobody's mentioning the wildlife. There's all the lakes and all the boreal forests to the north.

The mountains.

Mountains.

Ooh, the Rocky mountains for sure. We talked to a few dozen people. Not one mentioned rats. So the reason why I'm asking is because. Do you know about the rat situation in Alberta?

Nope.

There is no rat situation.

Say more.

I don't know.

They've kept them out.

They've had policies to keep them out ever since I can remember. So there are no rats.

I take it from this conversation that isn't like a point of pride or something. No rats? Yeah.

No.

No, not really. Honestly, I literally hadn't thought about it.

Until you brought it up just now.

Lots of people said they knew there were no rats. They're glad about it, but it is not a point of pride. This is the thing. If something is not around, you don't think about it. There's one teenager put it.

That's like thinking why there's no giraffes walking around here. Like, it's just kind of normal to us.

Also, turns out life in Alberta is not so different from life in the rat filled rest of human civilization because Alberta has its own share of pests. In fact, as we stood there outside the zoo, an animal ran by us on the grass. And the family we were talking to was like, oh yeah, gophers. They're everywhere.

You see them a lot.

We probably have as many groundhogs and.

Prairie dogs as New York has rats.

Out in the rat control zone on the border, Karen and Jory confirmed that of all the pests they have in the province, mice, muskrats, wild feral pigs, the worst one is gophers. Anyway, that's what everybody calls them gophers. But as Karen points out, they're actually richardson ground squirrels.

You could call it the menace.

Out here, there's a war against gophers.

For sure.

There's an extreme war against gophers.

So in your farm, do you have to put out poisons for the gophers?

Yeah, or else you have to be like my dad and shoot a few hundred a day. Or else. We still don't have them under control. There's just thousands. You could sit in one spot all day and shoot gophers without moving. And then there's just holes, and it makes your field rough and bouncy and messy and. And they'll eat your grain. They're terrible. I hate them. I bet my dad has shot probably 2000 gophers already this season. Like, anytime he's not too busy working, that's what he goes and does.

So, wait, but then you're out here keeping the rats out, but you have this other pest that's just as bad almost.

Well, yeah, this one. This one we can eradicate, and that one is too far gone. We just. There's nothing we can do about it, really.

Well, they're native.

Yeah. Yeah.

Whereas a Norway or roof rat is not. It's an invasive species.

I know, but just because they're canadian doesn't mean they're not terrible for you.

Yeah. Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

Standing there in the rat control zone, Karen did try to make the case that rats are way worse than gophers. Gophers don't move into a house or grain bin and leave their pee and poo. They don't shoot through fours and do the same kinds of destruction. But in the end, what it comes down to is gophers are canadian. So, what are you gonna do? Like, rats in New York, you can kill a few thousand here or there, but they're not going away. Even in a province that's done the impossible, some things are truly impossible. So, what do you guys think? You can't enter Alberta, Canada.

Oh, no.

Oh, so sad.

Oh, no. Hey, Rachel. Oh, no. We don't get to go to Canada. Oh, don't get to eat a bunch of sloppy poutine and fart all night. Hey, you want to catch a game by the Edmonton Oilers? Okay, now it's time for act four. Hey, put that down. You can't eat that.

Okay, so this is another story that you guys organized for us. Just explain what you did.

Yeah, what we did was. Rachel, you wanna. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we went under Delancey street. Great street. We got some microphones. We set it up in a real rat's nest. So this is gonna be a real treat for you. You don't get to hit us very much, you know, we're very private inside the rat's nesthouse. For those of you who like film, this is called verite. This is real rats talking. Real issues. Talk about that. Real rat. Real rat. Real rat. Yes, real rat. Rat. Real, real rat. Rat.

Now, I have actually heard this recording, and just an important fact for our human listeners to know before we play this, I should tell you, rat litters, they discuss. Rat litters are about a dozen pups. And this is also important to know. Male rats sometimes eat baby rats. And when they've studied this with lab rats, they found that the males are less likely to eat their own babies. Isn't that right, you guys?

Exactly. Hey, depends on how much you like the kid. Look, and it's a cold war, but, you know, we have a lot of babies for a reason. All right? You're GOnna lose a few. You're gonna keep a bunch. You're gonna eat a few.

Okay. So another thing, and this is kind of out there, scientists have theorized that female rats might choose to mate with lots of males to protect their own pups from being eaten. Though, as best we can tell, no studies have tested that yet. Okay. Anything else you guys think we need to say to set this up?

No. Just roll the tape. All right. Quick warning. The story acknowledges the existence of sex between mammals.

Okay, so this is a conversation between rats.

Jerry. Yeah? I have amazing news. Okay. I'm pregnant. No way. Yeah. And you're sure it's mine? Absolutely. 100% sure. Absolutely. Because you did, you know, as we all know. Yes. No, I did have sex with every other male rat here, but absolutely. Yeah. Wow. So you're not gonna eat them?

Yeah.

Cause they're yours. Yeah, probably not. I probably won't eat them. Okay. Especially if there's, you know, an abundance of food scraps and garbage. If I'm full, I definitely won't eat them. Okay. And even if I'm not full, I probably won't eat them because they're yours, baby. Yeah. This is the happiest news. I would say that there's a slim chance I would eat more than a couple of these babies, but I'm so psyched. Congratulations. I wanna be a monster here, but Gina had some babies. If you're feeling a little peckish, that's interesting. Probably. I don't. Gina's baby. Gina's babies probably wouldn't hit the spot, you know. Really? Gina's so tempestuous. She can get so emotional. Okay, so you know that about Gina? Really? Well, then, I'm just saying I probably wouldn't want to eat Gina's babies. Well, okay. Are they only Gina's babies? Are they. I don't know. Are they all little Jesus mice? Unless Gina, that is having immaculate conception babies, is definitely hers in someone. No. I assume they were Ralph's. Yeah, I assume so, too. Well, then why aren't you eating them? I don't know. Something instinctively. Ooh.

Ooh.

Listen, these aren't even yours. There, I said it. These aren't even yours. That's why I want to eat them so bad. I mean, you have to give me credit. I promise not to eat more than one 6th of those babies when we both kind of instinctively need them. Oh, you keep your promises. You really keep your promises. Hey, I'm sorry it didn't work out. You're a great partner. But I guess things bounce the wrong way.

And.

I guess. I guess I impregnated Gina. I didn't mean to do it. I can see your nose twitching just when you say her name. I know. I should have known her beady little eyes when she told me she was pregnant. Well, once a rat, always a ratified shout out to our friends Jerry and Louise Emmanuel. Joji produced that story. Living in the sewer in the baby's.

Crib down in the.

Royal program was produced today by Dayan Wu and Ike Street Kondaraja.

The top of the show was produced by Valerie Kipnis. Hello. Mustafa produced that story from Alberta.

The people who put together our show today include Fiat Bennon, Mike Kamate, Aviva de Kornfeld, Bethel Hopte, Cassie Halley, Seth Lynn Tobin, Lowestone Nelson, Katharine Raymondo, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rumery, Alyssa Shipp, Elise Spiegel, Christopher Swatala, and Matt Tierney. Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Help on today's rerun from Henry Larson. Today's show was first broadcast a year ago. Since then, Denise from the top of the show says her landlord did send a guy who cleaned up the trash and took care of the rats. Todd, the single guy in act one who was trying to get rid of his rats, finally succeeded doing that three months ago, though he says 90% he would get another rat if the opportunity presented itself.

Special thanks today to rat disease expert Katie Byers from the Vancouver rat Project, Robin Nagel, Finn Miller, Kim McCarson, Laura Fitzgerald at the archives at Yale University Library. James Edwards, Kate Smut, Billy Lamda, and go to Sherrod.

And now in real life, you guys are Bashir Salahuddin and Chandra Russell. You guys, let's hear your real voices. Hello, hello.

Hey, everybody.

So. And people can see you on the tv show Southside on Max. And you're gonna be in chairman's showcase live at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles on September 25. Chandra, you're starring in the film All Happy Families, which is coming out in September. Is that right? Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Seriously, Mandy, this is awesome. Yes.

The red improv in our last story was Chris Gethard and Tammy Sager.

He's the host of the podcast Beautiful Anonymous.

Tammy's doing in private the newly reopened upright Citizens brigade in New York City. Our website this americanlife.org, where you can hear our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free.

This american life is delivered to public.

Radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio exchange. Thanks as always to our programs co founder, Mister Tori Malatia. He bought a new briefcase this week. It was leather, but he didn't want cowhide, he didn't want snakeskin. He was very specific with the salesperson. They went back and forth.

Talk about that. Real rat. Real rat. Real rat. Yes, real rat. Rat. Real, real rat. Rat.

I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this american life, next week on the podcast of this american live.

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Here we go.

A million people go to the Iowa State Fair, some for the rides, some for four h, some to sell stuff, and some so you have to shoot.

Ten balloons and change your gun and come back across the timer in 9 seconds. That's less than a second per shot.

We go to the fair next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.