I was shaken to read about the mouse infestation in Ellie Glass’s former apartment: I too once lived in a place where I often woke up to discover a crater had been chewed out of the bread loaf overnight, and even now the merest suggestion of nocturnal movement in the kitchen of my (blessedly rodent-free) new apartment can jolt me awake from two rooms away. (The real pest in this new place is the landlord, but that’s a story for another time.)
The pest control racket is, as Glass points out, a fascinating component of Adams’s “war on rats” that merits closer attention. Despite the proven futility of this war, the exterminator elites have maintained their prestige and standing as key counselors to successive mayors: Pest Management Professional Hall of Famer Bobby Corrigan, for example, has been dispensing rat advice to city hall since last century. In any other industry you’d expect a record of failure this long and comprehensive to have consequences, but pest control clearly plays by different rules: The ratcatchers seem as resilient and invincible as the rats thems…