Photo:Urban Roadkill
Rains and flooding will cause the critters that live underground to emerge. Just be glad it’s been a relatively dry April. Here’s an article about something that can happen during extreme flooding as seen with Hurricane Sandy.
Here’s an image for you to get out of your head:
Sandy has brought a feast to their feet. New sources of food are washing out of the waterways and along flooded streets, including loads of rotting trash, other rats, pigeons, and fish. The well-fed rats will burrow beneath buildings under cover of night to establish new homes, sliding into holes as small as a half inch (1.3 centimeters)āthe width of their skullsāeven though their bodies can measure up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) long.
After the Sandy, New Yorkers discovered thousand of rats running around the underground system. What are the reasons why rats in New York seem to be comfortable and well adapted around humans?
According to the National Geographic article āAfter Sandy’s New York Deluge, a Flood of Rats?ā, rats usually hide underground, making their nests. They even like to hide under the soil in the dry weather and dig dipper than the water can go. But when hurricane came, a lot of them had to come out of their hiding places and find new places for sources. Along with that a lot of food was washed out as well and it made rats to relocate and move closer to new souses. As Johnna Rizzo wrote: āThe well-fed rats will burrow beneath buildings under cover of night to establish new homes, sliding into holes as small as a half inch (1.3 centimeters)āthe width of their skullsāeven though their bodies can measure up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) long.ā
Where humans suffer during natural disasters, rats seem to adapt very well to the new environment. Some cities might think that it didnāt rain enough in April this year, but New Yorkers should be glad for relatively dry April.