Put your rat terrier purchase on hold. You may not need it. Among the yuckiest fears of urban victims of superstorm Sandy was the potential for all that sea water surging into subway and sewer tunnels to displace the millions of rats who call the underground their home.
But it looks like that fear was groundless. No reports of rodent packs roaming the streets and coursing into apartment buildings have hit the wires (yet). The waters likely rushed into tunnels and crevices so fast that the rats had no time to escape and many of them died.
I talked to a handful of MTA workers tending to the East River tunnel of the 2/3 line in Brooklyn Heights and they denied seeing any exodus. Sam Miller, a spokesman for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygeine, emailed back the reassurance that the city has "not seen an increase in rats above ground caused by Hurricane Sandy." He also noted that, while flooding often does displace rats, it "also drowns young rats in their burrows and can reduce the rat population." (Calls to the Centers For Disease Control went unanswered.) Rodentologist Robert Corrigan, who works with the city on keeping populations under control, told the web site LiveScience that baby rats will likely die unless they are carried to safety by their mothers. The same article had Herwig Leirs, a rodentologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, suspecting that most of the rats living in subway tunnels "will actually drown." (NYC residents: You can monitor reported rat violations and clearances here at the city's interactive map and Rat Information Portal.)
Rats are legendary swimmers, can chew through steel cable and can leap from great heights and survive, but the force of the water gushing through tight spaces may have been just too much for them to handle. An irony brought to light by Scientific American blogs editor Bora Zivkovic is that the surge of water could have done the most damage to the dominant rats that live deeper underground, while the submissive rats forced to live closer to the surface had a quicker escape route. Zivkovic has a roundup of myths and truths here. The creatures who survived the initial surge will be treated to lots of trash and food that got pushed underground with the water, and with city streets and stores downtown empty and without power, the braver survivors are free to forage.
Without a groundswell of rodents, fears of bubonic plague should be set aside, or never feared at all. City officials say no research has demonstrated an increased health risk from flushed rats from underground. In a 2007 Q&A with the New York Times, rat expert Corrigan said the type of flea and type of rat most associated with the Black Death, rattus rattus, is not found in NYC anyway. That would be the Norway rat. But some rarer (to these parts) breeds have been spotted in New York City, such as this specimen reported to be a Gambian pouched rat, which can grow up to three feet in length. The big ones, at least, can be easily speared by, say, a pitchfork.
I salute the cleanup crews currently working their way through the tunnels to restore service to millions of stranded New Yorkers. They're going to be encountering some nasty stuff. But for those us lucky to live and work above ground, do not fear the rats. They reproduce madly and will come back in numbers as before. But their life is dark and terrible. As Robert Sullivan writes in his excellent survey, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, "the bulk of rats live in quiet desperation, hiding beneath the table of man, under stress, skittering in fear, under siege by larger rats." Sound just like a lot of people I know.
