Chicago Gets “Rat City” Award for Sixth Year

Rats are a waste management issue. If you allow waste to go undisposed of, rats flourish.

Having a bunch of empty or otherwise dilapidated buildings doesn’t help either.

As the old saying goes: “a city has the rats it deserves.”

CNN:

Chicago is the six-time holder of a title that no city wants.

The Windy City has topped the list of the rattiest cities in the United States for the sixth year in a row.

Orkin, an Atlanta-based pest control service, ranks US cities based on the number of new rodent treatments from September 1 to August 31 of each year. The result is a list of 50 cities, with most changing spots each time the list is updated. Chicago, however, is still No. 1.

“Rodents are experts at sniffing out food and shelter, and they’re resilient in their ways to obtain both,” Ben Hottel, an Orkin entomologist, said in the company’s press release. “Residential properties offer the ideal habitat for rodents, and once they’ve settled in, they’re capable of reproducing rapidly and in large quantities.”

Efforts to tame the city’s rat population have been going on for years. Chicago’s “war on rats” escalated with the introduction of a new rat task force back in 2016. Residents had even begun adopting cats to squash their numbers.

“War on Rats” and “Rat Task Force” are great ideas.

Cats are a good idea too.

But again: it’s a waste if you don’t deal with the root of the problem, which is city waste management.

Chicago is run like a third world country because third world people run Chicago.

So of course it has a waste disposal problem and a general urban management problem.