A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
If you've ever been to New York City, you might have come away feeling like rats run the town. Well, officials there say they have a solution. Here's NPR's Jeongyoon Han.
JEONGYOON HAN, BYLINE: It was two years ago. Morningside Heights resident Carl Mahaney was walking with his kid to the first day of school when they came across heaps of trash bags lying on a sidewalk.
CARL MAHANEY: The rats would come from where the rats come from, and they would just tear the bags apart.
HAN: He was fed up. So naturally, he took to Twitter and tagged his district council member.
MAHANEY: What are we going to do about this? Like, parents and families shouldn't have to deal with this on their way to school.
HAN: The council member in question, Shaun Abreu, knows a thing or two about rats. When he was younger, rats chewed up his grandmother's furniture and infested his uncle's closet.
SHAUN ABREU: Rats are a very New York City problem.
HAN: So when Abreu saw Mahaney's tweet, he met with the sanitation department to figure out a solution. They came up with a pilot trash program in West Harlem where people dump trash into large containers the size of about two parking spaces.
ABREU: The best way to handle it is by shutting off the food supply.
HAN: Since the pilot launched, the number of rat complaints have gone down by 66% in the neighborhood. Jessica Tisch is the city commissioner for the Department of Sanitation.
JESSICA TISCH: We are literally copying what virtually every other major city around the globe has been doing for decades.
HAN: To be fair, the city makes 44 million pounds of trash every single day. The city even tried out trash cans in the '60s and '70s. But because they were metal, they became more of a noise nuisance than a plus. So New York canned the idea and let the trash bags pile up - that is, Tisch says, until now. The city's goal is to containerize all of its trash. That means bins, large and small, everywhere, and more frequent trash pickups.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRASH BIN SQUEAKING)
HAN: Still, there are critics. The bins will take up parking spaces and sidewalks. Some say the city should have put more thought into recycling, and some neighborhoods still won't be able to keep up with the trash. But Tisch says the efforts steer the city in the right direction.
TISCH: We don't want change just for the sake of change. We want change for the sake of restoring dignity and order to our streets.
HAN: And for the woman often called the rat czar, Kathy Corradi, that means educating people.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KATHY CORRADI: So I want to point out here, and maybe...
HAN: Standing in the middle of shrubs in Collect Pond Park, Corradi gives a tour of this part of Lower Manhattan from the rat's-eye view. About 20 people signed up for the tour. It's part of Corradi's Rat Academy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CORRADI: So here we have a, you know, pretty healthy burrow system. And there are some telltale signs.
HAN: And then, as if on cue...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CORRADI: So...
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Gasps).
CORRADI: A rat.
HAN: A rat scurries over Corradi's foot. But Corradi just keeps talking. Brooklyn resident Marisa Beckley says the whole event is eye-opening.
MARISA BECKLEY: I, for instance, had no idea that there were, like, certain types of shrubs that were more attractive to rats.
HAN: Corradi says that's what her job is really all about.
CORRADI: We need humans bought in, changing their behaviors, thinking about their interactions in our city in a different way.
HAN: Then, just maybe, New Yorkers can make rats' lives in the Big Apple just a little bit harder.
Jeongyoon Han, NPR News, Manhattan.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I THINK I SMELL A RAT")
THE WHITE STRIPES: (Singing) Oh, I think I smell a rat. Oh, I think I smell a rat. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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