That’s so bRAT

Sydney has a rat problem. The rodents are apparently immune to poisons and becoming super-spreaders of disease. Even worse, they’ve nailed the concept of detached cool, standing in the street in the middle of the day, “oblivious” and unbothered.

It’s not just Sydney. Rising temperatures and populations mean 11 global cities are experiencing significant increases in rat numbers. In the UK, a 56cm rat was recently captured. Toronto is experiencing a “perfect rat storm”. 

New York has so many rats, they have appointed a “rat tsar”, which is presumably a human to deal with the rats rather than an elevated representative for the rats. It’s not immediately clear.

What to do about the virulent vermin? One suggestion is to use the native water rat to manage the invasive black rat population. Which feels awfully like the Simpsons idea of dealing with a lizard plague by using snakes to kill the lizards, gorillas to kill the snakes, then waiting for the gorillas to freeze to death in winter. Perhaps not.

A return to Denmark sees a more feasible solution. Aalborg zoo has asked for donations of healthy small pets to be fed to its Eurasian lynx. Predicting a backlash, the zoo said the animals would be “gently euthanised”, and that “nothing goes to waste” before slipping up and accidentally also asking for some live horses.

So, there’s our answer. Now we only need a Pied Piper to take the rats to Taronga. Just make sure we pay him.