NEW YORK (AP) – When a pack of rats invaded a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant here, many people were shocked as they watched widely distributed footage of the dozen twitchy rodents scampering across the eatery’s floor.

But in a city like New York, businesses that handle food wage a seemingly endless battle against vermin. The difference with the KFC-Taco Bell caught on tape Friday? Patrons usually don’t see the creatures and certainly not in such large numbers.

“It’s one thing knowing it. It’s another seeing it,” said Nicole West, 23, who lives in Greenwich Village, the same neighborhood as the restaurant, which was shut down Friday and remained closed.

Trouble with mice, rats, cockroaches and other pests aren’t limited to restaurants. State sanitary reports show scores of small markets and prominent grocery stores like Fairway, Balducci’s, Gourmet Garage, Gristedes, Food Emporium and D’Agostino have at one point or another dealt with similar problems.

“The city is a tough place,” Jeffrey Eisenberg, president of Pest Away Exterminating in Manhattan, said in a recent interview. “It’s a battle. If you look, you’re gonna find them.”

According to the reports, rodents gnaw their way into sacks of cat and dog food, pasta and beef packages and loaves of bread. Mice and rat droppings are unearthed in storage and other areas that customers don’t see. Rat and mice carcasses are not uncommon.

Inspectors once discovered two rodent burrows in one supermarket’s dairy cooler. At a Fairway in Harlem, inspectors over the years have uncovered rodent-defiled macaroni products, a live rat and a meandering mouse in a fresh corn display.

Of course, it’s the sniveling rat that makes people most squeamish.

“It is disgusting,” said Brian O’Keefe, who has frequented the city’s KFC-Taco Bell restaurants. “I mean, rats are supposed to be on the outside. And mice are on the inside. If there’s rats inside you got a real serious problem.”

It’s impossible to estimate how many rats there are in New York, experts say, but one popular belief is that there’s one for each of the more than 8 million people in the city. Whatever the number, the rats have continued to thrive despite the city spending millions to eradicate them.

The typical New York rat weighs about one pound and has a very flexible body, making it easy to squeeze though openings as small as a half inch. Each year, a female rat can easily bear dozens of offspring that survive, said Frank Gasperini, a pest-control expert.

They sometimes bite people, but mostly, they just eat – at least one ounce of food every 24 hours, according to Bobby Corrigan, an internationally recognized rat expert. That means few food establishments are immune.

“Even the most famous restaurants can get rats,” Mr. Gasperini said.

The city’s health department finds evidence of vermin, especially mice, at various eateries, from Caribbean restaurants to kosher food shops. Health inspection scores at chain restaurants depend on the location.

Jessica Leighton, the city’s deputy commissioner of environmental health, said sloppy sanitation can attract rodents. “The basic message is, you need to remove food sources,” she said. “In restaurants, rodents are a symptom of poor sanitation.”

Mr. Eisenberg, the exterminator, said wiping out vermin is impossible. His company kills about 50,000 rats and 250,000 a mice a year in the city, but it’s a war that can’t be won – only managed.

Like other businesses, Steve Jenkins, a part-owner of Fairway, says he spends “tons of money” on extermination. He said the location and size of the stores make it almost impossible to wipe out the rodent problem.

“We run a really tight ship,” he said in a recent interview. “We are very proud of the conditions of our stores.”

Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC-Taco Bell, said the incident was unacceptable and a violation of its high standards. The company said construction in the building’s basement apparently stirred up the rats.

On Saturday, passers-by were still stopping to gawk at the now-notorious fast food joint. West was one of them. She said she’d never eat there again.

“I think this restaurant is pretty much done,” she said.
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Associated Press Writer Nahal Toosi contributed to this story.