re: Beached Rat Carcasses Indicate Mass Rodent Death During Ida in NYC

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Yet even as the local rat population has taken a major hit, close observers say that the city’s most reviled and indomitable species has, conversely, become more visible.

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Well, yeah. Their primary territory (subways and sewers) were flooded. The ones not down there at the time or able to get out are going to be topside foraging for food for a while.

Also, COVID put a big hurt on subway travel. Without the millions (roughly 2M per day) of daily riders dropping food bits or throwing food remnants into trash cans, the rat population in the subways became more aggressive thus more noticeable.