Dans Hamptons

I watched The Departed last night. It was a pretty good flick and I suppose it’s cool Scorsese got the golden statue for it, but wasn’t it really just a delayed reaction and the proverbial make-up sex for his not getting honored for Goodfellas? Now if you didn’t already know, the movie is about rats in Boston. No, not rats as in Nimh, but informant rats on both sides of the law, rats with fluctuating South Boston accents who like to scream a lot – those kinds of rats. Though I enjoyed the film, I was quite appalled by the insult-to-the-viewer’s-intelligence sequence at the end. After all is said and done, the esteemed director gives us the big finale. An actual hairy, gray rat scurries across the screen. I know, it’s brilliant. In case we didn’t get the part about the rats with all the “rat” talk, Nicholson’s character draws a rat on his paper placemat, or the entire premise of the movie, we get to see a real, live rat to drive the point home. It’s simply and magnificently brilliant. I’m sorry for the rant, I’m leading up to a related story.

A couple weeks ago, on February 23, the news dropped along with incriminating footage that a Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell had become infested with rats overnight. The creepy critters were shown racing about the restaurant and performing acrobatic maneuvers on furniture and each other as they played and foraged with abandon. A TV crew caught the rodents on camera as they put on a show through the large, street side window. Health inspectors descended upon the eatery and by the following afternoon the place was closed. It was another tough blow to Taco Bell after they had just begun to recover from a recent E-coli outbreak tracked to their restaurants. The incident has brought renewed attention to the city’s rat problem that has existed for centuries – before the Gangs of New York years. Wow, that’s three Scorsese films referenced so far.

According to the Physics Factbook, an Encyclopedia of Scientific essays, the mean streets of Manhattan are home to an estimated 70-million rats. That’s about 9 to every one person in the city. Other reports put it at about a 1:12 ratio – 96 million – but most reports seem to corroborate the first estimate. Robert Sullivan’s Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants (Bloomsbury, 2004) is full of uplifting facts about our Chalupa-loving friends. Sullivan hit the darkest alleys only the most seasoned taxi driver might know with night vision goggles and his notebook to observe rats in their most famous environment. In doing so, the author imparts interesting facts and charts the city’s history through the most unlikely perspective. Rats, in it’s own way is nature-writing at its finest.

Here are some fascinating tidbits from his book. Eighteen percent of all phone cable disruptions and 26 percent of all electric cable breaks are caused by rats. Twenty-five percent of fires with unknown causes are started by rats. Rats destroy one third of the world’s food supply each year. Other than that creature you see in the mirror every day, rats are the most destructive mammals on the planet. They breed a lot faster too. Rats have sex 20 times a day and a female can have up to 12 litters of 20 babies a year. One pair of rats can create 15,000 descendents a year. It may sound like one of those silly New York stories, but it’s true. Read the book. Next time you’re in the city, head out after hours and see what you can find lurking in the garbage. The rat is the raging bull of Gotham. Perhaps we could orchestrate an annual running of the rats. Maybe it could be on Saint Patrick’s Day to consolidate the theme? I’d like to see the rats of the world. If I ever take my voyage to Italy with no direction home, I’ll speak to the aviator and see if he knows the best spots in Rome for some really ancient rat history. I’m sure when they were bringing out the dead from the old casino – I mean coliseum – rats were running aplenty. Any Italian-American can tell you rats weren’t made in Milan. It had to be Rome, but New York, New York is the place for me – rats and all.

Can you count the Marty films? Send your answers to olivermotor@optonline.net and I’ll publish the first winner. Wait, who’s that knocking at my door? Oh, it’s, um..Kundun? Yeah.

When In Manhattan

Rats!