| As
many as 1.2 billion passengers ride the New York City
subway each year. They are not alone. The subway structure
is a perfect habitat for rodents and it is common to see
mice and rats running on the train tracks and into the
dark tunnels.
The reason there are rodents in the subway tunnels is
because, says Alan Yager, superintendent at the New
York City subway track department, they find and ideal
environment there. "It is dark, they have a good water
supply and they can get any amount of food necessary
for their survival." Passengers that ride the subway
bring in the food. Some of it winds up in the tracks,
he says.
The underground system is a place where rodents like
to live, says Wagner. It would be almost impossible
to eliminate them, he says, because the conditions they
find inside the tunnels make rats and mice proliferate.
Once, says Neysa Pranger, a spokeswoman for the Straphangers
organization, a woman called complaining about a rat
infestation in 161st Street station in the Bronx.
Because the tunnels had flooded the rats came out of
their hiding place and ran on the platform.
Straphangers is a project of the New York Public Interest
Research Group that lobbies for passengers' rights and
supports their complaints about the New York City subway
system.
The organization receives many complaints from the subway
riders, says Pranger, but the rats and mice complaints
are at the lower end of the list.
According to Yager, the Metropolitan Transit Authority
does get complaints about rats but, he says, they have
gone down considerably in the four years he has been
working here.
"We don't get more than three complaints a week," he
says.
According to Yager, the MTA has a program that cleans
the track continuously. A crew will do the cleaning
and will answer to specific complaints. When any sign
of rodents is found, the team leaves bait with rodenticide.
More than 100 people are dedicated to this job every
night throughout the subway system.
The busiest stations would have the bigger presence
of rodents. "Where there's garbage we're going to have
a problem," says Wagner. "We're providing shelter for
them," says Wagner. And every night the track crew will
try to get rid of them. "We can't eliminate them but
we can build a structure that can exclude them."
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Harlem
Stories
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"Subway
stations and parks harbor a lot of rats. Because
we are right in between them, it was really bad,
especially in the summer."
—Beverly
DeCastro, Superintendent of a building at 116
St. and Manhattan St. in Harlem.
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Did
You Know?
|
| The
word "rodent" means gnawing animal. A rodent's teeth
grow at a rate of about 10 centimeters a year. If
the animal doesn't keep constantly gnawing and chewing,
its teeth would grow until it is impossible to eat. |
| Rats
can't sweat. So the way they get rid of excess heat
is through their tail. One can tell if a rat is
overheating by feeling its tail. |
| Rats
have poor eyesight, especially the pink-eyed varieties.
They sway from side to side while staring at an
object, scanning their field of vision to take in
as much as possible. |
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