XPost: nyc.motorcycles, nyc.seminars, nyc.transit 
 XPost: talk.politics.misc 
 From: nigel@oxford.edu 
  
 When New Yorkers see something scurrying, they say something and 
 that has brought rat complaints to the city's 311 hotline to a 
 recent high of more than 24,000 so far this year, officials said 
 on Thursday. 
  
 "The rats are taking over," New York City Comptroller Scott 
 Stringer told Reuters. "I'm a lifelong New Yorker and I've never 
 seen it this bad... I see them on my way home, they're standing 
 upright, they say, 'Good morning, Mr. Comptroller.'" 
  
 With more than two months of grumbling still left in 2015, 
 rodent-related grievances were already at 24,375 as of 
 Wednesday, said Mayor Bill de Blasio spokeswoman Natalie 
 Grybauskas. That's up from 20,545 in 2014 and 19,321 in 2013. 
  
 And that's just above-ground rats - complaints about vermin in 
 the subway are routed to the Metropolitan Transportation 
 Authority and not recorded by the 311 line, Grybauskas said. 
  
 A city Health Department rodent expert, Carolyn Bragdon, laid 
 the blame, in part, on a new 311 mobile phone app in use since 
 February 2014, making it easier to rat out the pests to the 
 city's hotline that has been operating since 2003. 
  
 "Whenever you launch a new vehicle for complaints, you tend to 
 see increases," Bragdon said. "Over 90 percent of the increase 
 in complaints was due to the app." 
  
 So far this year, rat complaints consisted of 17,356 calls, 
 2,347 online remarks and 4,672 mobile app entries, statistics 
 show. Last year there were 16,964 calls, 2,361 online remarks 
 and 1,220 mobile app entries. 
  
 "As if no one knew this before the app - it's just not true," 
 Stringer said. "It's a lack of taking care of business by the 
 city's health department." 
  
 The city is spending $2.9 million to expand a pilot program to 
 eradicate "rat reservoirs," attacking them in the colonies they 
 set up in parks, subways and sewers, Bragdon said. Exterminators 
 set out bait, close burrows and work with the neighboring 
 community on best practices to avoid attracting them in the 
 future. 
  
 "What we know from the pilot is that we have the ability to 
 crash a rat population by 80 to 90 percent," Bragdon said. 
  
 The city has no official estimate on rat numbers, she said. 
  
 Last year, a Columbia University researcher estimated the 
 population at about 2 million, far fewer than traditional 
 estimates of 8 million, or one rat for every human in the most 
 populous U.S. city. 
  
 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/22/us-new-york-rats- 
 idUSKCN0SG2NC20151022 
   € 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)