Drats, there's a rat problem! but hold on to your hats
Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats/ And bit the babies in their cradles/ And ate the cheese out of the vats/ And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles.' Had he been around today, Robert Browning might have penned those lines to describe not medieval Hamelin, but present-day New York City.
NYC has been plagued by an infestation of rodents, which has left it, known for a different kind of rat race, in dire straits. While it is no stranger to rats, there's been a Malthusian population explosion of the varmints who lurk in abandoned tenements and vacant lots.
To confound the pestiferous problem, civic authorities must contend with animal rights advocacy, which disapproves of the eradication methods, involving employment of specially trained hunting dogs, painful glue traps, or the use of poisons, which lead to a lingering demise.
A recent plan to curb the menace humanely is to adopt birth control measures, based on contraceptives of the oral kind. Called ContraPest, the formulation is contained in salty pellets designed to prove temptingly toothsome to fastidious furry critters scattered in the favoured stomping grounds of the targeted consumers. The pills supposedly impair the ovarian function of females and disrupt production of sperm cells in males.
It remains to be seen if NYC's riff on India's programme, as summarised in cautionary slogans like 'Hum Do, Hamare Do' and 'Do Ya Teen, Bas', will achieve its objective.
According to the Chinese zodiac, people born in the Year of the Rat possess
