A New York City councilwoman believes she has found a foolproof way to exterminate the burgeoning rat population in the Big Apple – one that has already yielded tremendous results on an Upper East Side section.
Julie Menin claims the rat-killing technique has worked so well on East 86th Street between Second Avenue and Park Avenue that she is extending it to other areas of the neighborhood.
The technique involves an exterminator pumping carbon monoxide into tunnels in sidewalk tree pits. To kill the rodents where they sleep, the exterminators employ mobile engines called Burrow Rx to inject carbon monoxide into the small underground crevices.
According to Matthew Deodato, president of Urban Pest Management, the carbon monoxide that leaks out of the burrows is safe for humans, pets, and other animals because it dissipates in the air, much like exhaust from running vehicles is only deadly without ventilation. If any rats manage to escape the fumes and the burrows, Deodato has a spiked garden hoe with which he is ready to kill them.
Menin claimed to have discovered the carbon monoxide approach while investigating attempts at eradication in other places, such as Boston. Then, beginning last year, she hired Urban Pest Management, a local exterminator, to fumigate burrows in tree pits.
“We launched this mitigation effort starting on the East 86th Street corridor, which was a corridor of enormous complaints, because we’ve got so many retail stores there and a tremendous amount of trash – and we had unbelievable success in terms of this technique,” Menin said, as reported by Gothamist. “And so now I’m launching it again on other streets within the district.”
“The method demonstrated an impressive eradication rate of nearly 100% in the tree pits where it was applied,” her office stated in a press release. “This is not the panacea that’s going to solve all of New York City’s rat problems, but it’s a very effective tool for the tree pit issue,” Menin said, as she has given the method a total of $30,000 in additional sanitation funding.
Mayor Eric Adams has made the fight on rats a priority of his administration, deploying a number of tactics and even appointing a ‘rat tsar’. So far, there are hints that the strategy has paid off, since rat complaints are down across the city, and new waste collection methods are limiting rats’ access to free trash meals.
