Saturday, April 28, 2018

Of Rats and Sinking Ships...

"You want proof Evolution is for real; don't waste time with fossils. Just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship's cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they've been improving with every new litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn't be the first island they took over" -- Andrew Vacchs, "Another Life".
Today, we will be speaking of rats, both literal and metaphorical, and their symbolic role in marking the decline of a once-great civilization.

It all began several months ago, when Comrade Bill DeBlasio, People's Plenipotentiary of New Yorkistan, decided that just what New York City really needed was another wasteful, guaranteed-to-fail program in which the plight of the "underprivileged"would be improved by the epic mismanagement of government resources, the granting of city contracts to Friends of Ours, in a process of Virtue Signalling so fucking stupid it could only have emerged from the brain of a Communist pretending to be a Liberal Democrat.

It would have all the hallmarks of all the other "successful" liberal-inspired political/social programs of the past: it would identify a problem that would adversely affect "The Poor" more than "The Rich" while denying the reality of The Poor's often-unmistakable contribution to the Problem's existence; it would involve the use of taxpayer dollars in an ineffective program which could not possibly achieve it's stated results given the methods chosen; it would be executed in a "holistic" manner that would take into consideration the tender feelings of people who, in a time and place where logic held sway, would be otherwise ignored; finally, it would achieve the goal of inflicting the pains of "impoverishment" upon the non-impoverished, and, as always, at the expense of the non-impoverished.

Because that's what Communism is: it's a program, motivated by envy, of hatred for people who are better than you. If we can't all be made equal, then we all can be made equally miserable. This is why any American City run by people of a certain socio-economic background, and a particular political view,  always become oozing blisters upon the landscape. See: Detroit, Baltimore, San Francisco, et. al.

It began, as all liberal programs of douchebag do, with "good" intentions...

In case no one knew, New York City has had a decades-long fight with the common rat. It had been winning that war by poisoning the little bastards by the tens of thousands, until one of The Other Symbols of Civilizational Decline, the Animal Rights Fucktard (who loves animals, and hates humans), rose from the muck of the Fetid Fringe Swamp, to scream about the methods being used. Poison was bad; it killed indiscriminately, and because a few cats, dogs, and sundry other animals kept as pets, came into contact with the Rat Poison, and subsequently died, more "humane" forms of vermin control were called for.

And here, I must pause for a moment and describe a few of the "more humane" efforts New York City undertakes in the field of Pest Control and Wildlife Management, because this problematic mindset suffuses the entire regime and extends to other categories of pests and nuisance animals.

For example, we have a deer problem on Staten Island. Yes, you read that right: a deer problem on an island in the midst of New York City. Since hunting bans went into effect in neighboring New Jersey a decade or more ago, deer populations have exploded. It is not uncommon to find deer wandering the New Jersey Turnpike, the outskirts of Newark International Airport, the Port of Elizabeth, and the neighboring (industrial) communities of Kearny, Elizabeth, and Bayonne, and even the concrete monstrosity of Newark, itself.

Forced to move by increasing numbers, the deer discovered that they could swim the Arthur Kill, a narrow body of water that separates Staten Island from New Jersey, regardless of tides, and the herd began setting up shop here. Which was easy to do, since approximately 20% of this island is protected forests and wetlands. We now have a herd of approximately 2,000 (by some estimates) sharing crowded living space on a 12-mile-long-by-7-mile-wide island, bisected by three major highways.

The deer are a nuisance; they are eating their way through the "protected" wetlands and forests; they destroy landscaping, they are a danger on our roads.

The "solution" the City came up with to this problem was as insanely stupid as it was politically-guided: since we're not allowed to hunt the deer (because Gun Control), and we're not allowed to capture and relocate them (because Animal Rights), the city instead opted for a program wherein the bucks would be tranquilized and sterilized at $3k a pop, and then released back into "the wild" (which is to say, my backyard).

Of course, this does nothing to stop new bucks from swimming the Arthur Kill, and of course, the City is unable to find all the bucks to snip 'em, which means that for all intents and purposes, the herd continues to flourish. Local citizens who take matters into their own hands and hunt the fuckers find themselves being criminally prosecuted, when caught.

Second example: Wild Turkeys.

Some dickhead got the idea that keeping wild turkeys as pets was not only a good idea, it could even be improved upon by breeding them with domestic birds. Naturally, the Dr. Doolittle who did this died, no one wanted his birds, they either escaped or were set free before wildlife officials could get them, and lo and behold!, Staten Island is now crawling with large flocks of obnoxiously dumbass hybrid turkeys tying up traffic, destroying property and leaving enormous amounts of bird shit everywhere, including around the hospital where their first breeding/nesting grounds were located, requiring special measures be taken to attempt to keep the hospital free of bird-borne pathogens passed on by bird dung.

In the meantime, the birds have been afforded something akin to Endangered Species status (as they are considered a unique breed), and the City has all but given up on trying to capture and relocate them, never mind exterminate them.

You can set a watch by the parade of wildlife that routinely invades my personal space: the deer arrive to graze on my lawn and shrubs at 6; the turkeys show up to eat the worms the deer turned up with their hooves at 7, and if that wasn't bad enough, the original nuisance wildlife of this island -- the possums, the raccoons -- seem to have also proliferated, and some have forgone their previously-nocturnal lifestyles and are active at all hours of the day.

You'd think it couldn't get any worse. But it has!

Because now the trouble is rats.

Having decided that City Housing Projects should enjoy a better reputation than they deserve (probably as part of a program of attracting even more human scum to live in them and vote democrat) the City has undertaken a massive Rat Abatement program in city public housing. To give you some idea of how well it's been working, read this article about a recent Press Event to announce the program's "success".

The Overlord and his Beloved live in a residential neighborhood in which there is a City Housing Project (approximately 1,000 feet away).In years past, these apartments were reserved for the Elderly, and while it enjoyed that status as housing for the indigent decrepit, things were just hunky dory. Then some "Community Activist" (translation: troublemaker with no real job and too much free time) protested the fact that the sub-human shit of the Other Boroughs were being discriminated against because they were barred from the "good" housing projects in the bucolic precincts of Staten Island, where the schools were better (key word: WERE), and where the crime rates were lower (key word: WERE), and where the (then) $15 toll (now $17, that pays for public transportation everywhere else but here) on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge kept the riff-raff off the island.

After all, what thief in his right mind wants to pay a toll to come rob you?

The floodgates opened, and the residual, sticky film of the human gene pool filled the void left by the last elderly people to die out and depart the Todt Hill Houses. They brought with them all the problems they were supposed to be fleeing, because none of them was bright enough to realize their problems didn't stem from where they lived, but because of WHO THEY ARE, and how they live, and one of those problems was rats. Lots of them.

So, some months ago, the City began the Rat Abatement Scam, Todt Hill Edition, and in the process solved (or appeared to solve) the rat problem inside the housing project. But only at the cost of shifting the problem into the local residential neighborhood, mostly because of the method used (plugging holes in buildings and cutting the rats off from access to their nests, not killing them). Living rats that get kicked out of their homes do things that Evolution has taught them to do: make a new home somewhere else, and eat someone else's food.

Like Mexicans.

It began innocently enough: I'm outside having a smoke one night -- a garbage night, so everyone has their trash cans out -- when I noticed a tiny, dark figure rapidly moving along the gutter across the street. When I investigated this happenstance, I discovered that I was face-to-face with a rat.

I called 311, the City "Helpline", that evening, and every subsequent day for a week, to report the presence of rats in the neighborhood. I warned my neighbors. I printed up and circulated fliers and stuffed them in mailboxes. I placed rat traps around my own house, but wasn't catching much of anything. The local cats appear to be too well fed to want to bother to hunt the little fuckers, too.

And then I went to toss the trash out last Friday evening, and found something on the order of 4-to-6 rats crawling on the cans (thankfully covered) ,but they had managed to chew their way through a thick contractor's bag and feast upon the riposte within. Needless to say, I was pissed.

So, I called the authorities again, and placed more traps outside the house, especially in the area where we keep the garbage cans. I spoke to two of my neighbors who (through dumbass) keep chicken coops directly across the street, because I can watch the parade of rats entering and exiting their back yards. The rats may have taken up residence there because of all the chicken feed. One of the chicken keepers is a responsible adult, who immediately took steps to secure his feed and clean up his coops; the other is a brain-damaged fucktard of about 17 years, who was drooling and picking his nose the entire time I was speaking to him.  Another neighbor has told me she found rats nesting under her back porch., next door to the nosepicker.

Last night was garbage night, again, and so I put the cans out. I also checked my traps this morning, and found two dead rats.I bagged them up and tossed them back where they belong: in the housing project's garbage area.

This used to be a very good neighborhood. To give you some example of how good it used to be, this past year our house was valued (for tax purposes) by the City and State in the $850,000 range. This despite terrible access to reliable public transportation, unchecked wildlife, lousy public schools populated by the new project arrivals, and a New York City Housing Project (itself the very definition of Bedlam) within 300 yards. It is now crawling with rats.

And because you can't poison them (because the Animal Rights fucktards get all screechy. As far as I'm concerned, animals can have rights when they pay taxes), and you can't hunt them (because the Gun Fairies wet themselves), you have to resort to "more humane" but more disgusting measures: like trapping rats on boards coated in adhesive, where if they don't expire from trauma and blood loss in pulling off or chewing through their own limbs in an attempt to escape, become easy prey for other predators, who, likewise get stuck on the adhesive and injured (judging from the feathers I found on one board, a hawk took a chance on one of the trapped rats, but barely avoided that very fate).

The next rat I catch is being mailed to Gracie Mansion. With any luck, it'll arrive at the same time as the sterile deer that ran into my car, and the hybrid turkey that I managed to disable with a fucking hammer, because they don't move for shit. In the meantime, every rat I catch is being returned to it's place of origin; the Housing Project. We never had rats before the Six-children-by-eleven-fathers set moved in, and brought their degraded and filthy lifestyle with them.

If you're going to tax me as if I'm living in Zuckerberg-like luxury, Comrade Bill, the least you can fucking do is understand what I live with and what your policies have caused. After all, that's what you're supposed to be all about right? Caring and solutions? Considering the results and expense, it's probably a safer bet to view YOU -- and your insufferable kind -- as the Real Rats.

This is no longer New York City, the Big Apple, the fabled Gotham. It's becoming Mogadishu or Kabul with indoor plumbing and 15 exotic forms of diarrhea.

If it wasn't for the fact that Mrs. Overlord can only manage to get the best of medical care in New York, we'd probably be looking to leave right now.

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