Many cultures around the world seem to have their own version of the rat king legend. But have you ever heard of a rat czar?
As of April 12, a rat czar looms over the rodent population of New York City, per ABC News. Her name is Kathleen Corradi.
The former elementary school teacher was tasked by the city’s mayor Eric Adams with ridding urban spaces of their extensive and enduring rat problem.
Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as the brown rat, came to New York City aboard ships from Europe in the 1700s, per Popular Science.
The densely populated urban sprawl built atop vast subterranean infrastructures, such as subway tunnels, provided the brown rat with the perfect habitat, Robert Corrigan, an urban rodentologist, wrote in an article.
It managed to grow, breed, spread, and bounce back from each extermination campaign launched against it by local authorities over the past two centuries.
One former New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, spent $32 million of taxpayer funds in an attempt to curb the rat infestation by reducing their numbers by 70%.
Yet as Corrigan told Popular Science, this isn’t enough.
“My experience is that we rarely give these local populations a knockout punch,” Corrigan explained, per Popular Science. “We’re really good at getting 70 percent eradication. Everyone feels good because that feels simple. But the population dynamics of this species shows that you’ve got to get 90 percent.”
With nearly 3.2 million rat sightings reported by residents via the city’s 311 service request line this year, the problem is now worse than ever.
“Rats have proven to be one of the most formidable opponents that humans have faced. Here in New York City, we’re locked in a constant battle,” said Council Member Erik Bottcher, per ABC News.
As for the newly inaugurated rat czar Corradi, she is beginning her assault on the rat population of Harlem first, per ABC News.
Here, she will establish a “rat mitigation zone” that will involve 19 full-time and 14 seasonal employees testing out different innovative techniques of detecting rodents, exterminating them, cutting off their food sources, and destroying their habitats.
The rollout of the “accelerated rat reduction plan” will cost New York taxpayers $3.5 million. Corradi will earn a salary of $155,000 a year.
If successful, the project will be expanded to other parts of the city.
To anyone wondering how the rat czar came to be, the process was as simple as responding to a job ad.
As Corradi explained to reporters during a press conference, when she first came across the ad that called for someone “bloodthirsty” with “killer instincts” who could commit to the “wholesale slaughter” of rats she thought it was a joke, per ABC News.
She had actually been actively involved in combating the rat problem since she was 10 years old. In her neighborhood, she helped circulate anti-rat petitions and led extermination efforts in New York City schools.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats,” Corradi promised the residents of New York City, per ABC News.