Carroll Gardens Holds Rat Festival To Draw Attention to Area Infestation

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The New York Sun

While the city’s biannual It’s My Park Day attracted volunteers to clean and repair nearly 200 parks across the city, residents of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, yesterday held a novel celebration: The First (and Hopefully Last) Rat Festival.


“Normally, we plant bulbs,” a member of the Committee to Improve Carroll Park, Judy Rayner, said. “This year, there are just too many rats. I don’t feel comfortable sending volunteers into the gardens, for their safety.”


“Anyway, the rats would just eat the bulbs,” she added.


New York City’s rat problem is increasing, according to the management report Mayor Bloomberg released in September. It said 13% of educational facilities showed signs of rodent infestation, up from 8% in 2004, and the Department of Health reported a 40% increase in the number of rat complaints, to about 31,600 in fiscal 2005.


“I think part of the rat problem is that for the first time you can report it very easily,” Mr. Bloomberg said.


For neighbors of the park, the problem is not statistical.


“Every time I go in the park, I see a rat,” Martin Schneider, 8, who lives across the street from the park, said. His father, Howard Schneider, said he was spooked to have rats so near where his children played.


“If I weren’t here supervising, I don’t think I would allow it,” he said.


The park’s gardens, designed for children to play in, have been closed.


In February, a Parks Department official noticed a large rat burrow. Since then, the department has started baiting traps every 10 days and picking up the trash twice daily. It installed trash receptacles with lids.


In fact, the committee lauded the Parks Department on its vigilance, but the infestation continues unabated.


“This issue is not just concentrated on the park,” a spokesman for the Parks Department, Warner Johnston, said. “The area is undergoing some construction over the subway. There are business and restaurants that leave trash out without putting it in a receptacle.” The F and G lines run under Smith Street, one of the park’s borders.


The large, inflatable rat that unions use to protest nonunion work sites was seen at the festival, which included a toy-rat hunt, an adopt-a-rat program, and a rat race.


The New York Sun

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