Tuesday, March 6, 2018

New rat strategy

From the Daily News:

The city’s Department of Health began using dry ice to kill rats Monday, after a successful 2016 pilot and the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the frozen carbon dioxide to kill rodents.

“Rat ice is used in parks primarily because it’s safe — it’s safe, it’s effective and it poses no risk to wildlife such as hawks and birds of prey,” DOH Director of Pest Control Ricky Simeone told reporters Monday at Columbus Park in lower Manhattan.

Simeone was standing beside three holes in the earth of one of the park’s flower beds — burrows, he said, for the rats. Three DOH exterminators, wearing gloves and using metal scoops, filled the holes with little cubes of smoking dry ice — and then buried them. Trapped inside with the dry ice, which turns to carbon dioxide, the rats will suffocate and die.

“Or, nicely put, they go to sleep and they don’t wake up,” Simeone said.

The method works within minutes — though some rats may escape, so the city typically treats an area three times, returning to look for new burrows they might have dug. It can be more effective than using poison.

9 comments:

Joe Moretti said...

How about disposing of litter and trash PROPERLY. Why is the most simple solution always tossed out.

You have rodents, rats, mice, ants, cock roaches because litter and trash are not properly disposed of and we have too many slobs in Queens, NYC and other places that think nothing of throwing litter/trash out an apartment window as in the Woodside CSX track, outside car windows and just throwing shit on the sidewalk and street constantly. FUCKING HUMAN SLOBS, that is why there are rodents, they happen to be attracted to trash, wow, who knew.

If your apartment is overrun by rodents, etc, either you are a slob that doesn't clean or the people in your building are fucking slobs.

COMMON SENSE 101. This is NOT brain surgery. Of course the city's asshole solution, poison, not holding people responsible for tossing litter everywhere, or would that infringe on people's rights to be slobs or maybe it would be deemed "racist".

Anonymous said...

The real breaking news here is that someone with brains actually works in the DeBlasio administration.

Anonymous said...

What? no objection from PETA about killing animals?

Anonymous said...

"Or, nicely put, they go to sleep and they don’t wake up"

One of the key tenets to public speaking is to speak to your target demographic in terms they can understand. clearly we are all first graders who can't imagine a world where you simply put a disease carrier out of its misery and left it at that. better yet, lets make sure we plant new flowers in memorium of those who have been lost.

Rodent Lives Matter!!

JQ LLC said...

Finally a solidly good idea. The dry ice looks like sugar cubes too.

Rat Queen said...


I agree people should not litter but that will not stop rats.

Rats go into garbage cans and dumpsters very easily and they breed quickly. Also dog feces is a prime food for rats so even if flushed they'll find it.




>Anonymous Joe Moretti said...
>>How about disposing of litter and trash PROPERLY. Why is the most simple solution always tossed out.

TommyR said...

A decent solution, and hopefully, one that will be time-tested as effective.

Anonymous said...

But we still have our two legged rats in the city council.

Anonymous said...

Since they are banning plastic shopping bags, why not ban plastic trash bags and return to metal cans!!! Madmen retro all the trendy way!