On a brisk morning in Harlem, where Morningside Avenue meets Manhattan Avenue, a tactical team of municipal workers in reflective vests gathered around a tree bed. A Chick-fil-A sandwich carton had been dragged into several large holes. The crew detected rat burrows, tapped the soil with a rake handle, and watched a fat rat darting across the sidewalk before disappearing under a metal gate.
The workers cleared trash, leveled soil, and sealed most holes with expanding foam, gravel, and steel wool. Into the last hole they snaked a hose connected to the Burrow Rx, a gas-powered rat killing machine on wheels. Danny Hernandez, an administrative parks and recreation manager, described the process as humane, stating, "The rats get drowsy, and they fall asleep. Permanently."
The Burrow Rx, which uses carbon monoxide made visible as smoke via oil, poses less collateral risk than poison, according to Hernandez. Jose Baez, a park supervisor, noted the burrow extended far under the sidewalk. NYC has long waged war on rats using traps, birth control, poison, dry ice, and the toxic drowning bucket introduced by then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who later appointed Kathleen Corradi as Rat Czar before she left the role in October 2025. The city now employs a multipronged approach across several agencies.
The Parks Department targets tree beds, the Department of Sanitation pushes containerization of garbage, and the Department of Health conducts inspections visualized on a color-coded Rat Information Portal. Despite 25,025 rodent complaints filed with 311 this year—the lowest in seven years—Caroline Bragdon, the Health Department’s director of neighborhood interventions, cautioned against reading too much into the data, which she called "very, very messy."
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing