I did live there and on a single family block in queens. Typically there was two pickups a week with people using metal cans in those days. There were plenty of rats.

Where people go, rats follow. If you think that your town/city/building doesn’t have rats, you are wrong.

HN commenters don’t have all of the answers. Garbage bags on the street are a nuisance, but not the problem.

My point was not that SI is a shining example of a garbage free paradise, more so that them making fun of it considering their own problems is hypocritical at best.

Oh totally get it. Staten Island isn’t a rat paradise either… but the density of people is much lower.

>If you think that your town/city/building doesn’t have rats, you are wrong.

I've never even seen a feral rat in real life. Might make for an interesting Ask HN poll. Estimate how frequently you see rats.

  - Haven't yet
  - Once per decade
  - Once a year
  - Once a month
  - Once a week
  - Daily

Squirrels, yup, lots of them around. And I've seen plenty of mice in my life, and I'm assuming that's what the owls are eating. Beavers? Check. But no rats in 40+ years. YMMV.

I've seen rats... when I've visited NYC. (OK I also saw one in Chicago)

They tend to avoid people from a visibility standpoint and thrive in denser areas. Outside of big old cities you typically find them around restaurants and shopping areas.

These places spend alot to control them. Google for “rat bait station”. You’ve seen those at any Walmart, grocery store or in the shrubbery on the side of retail buildings.

I’ve been to and lived in plenty of big cities. NYC is unique in it’s rat problem for sure. Other cities obviously have rats, but they’re nowhere near as common (or big!)

It’s 100% due to the garbage bags on the street. If you walk by one of the huge piles in Manhattan (e.g . outside the NYU dorms), try throwing something at it, you’ll see dozens of rats scatter.

> Garbage bags on the street are a nuisance, but not the problem.

I find it hard to believe that inexhaustible mountains of calorie-dense food would not affect the population of an organism adapted to that niche.

> And then New Yorkers have the gall to constantly make fun of Staten Island

Well to be fair, Staten Island used to be the literal garbage dump for NYC, and being incorporated as the fifth borough was actually the reason this stopped (because it's illegal to dump trash within the city limits).

Right, but you kind of lose the right to make fun of it when the garbage dump moved from SI to right in front of your door step, and everyone else's. One fond memory back when I lived in Manhattan is being at a small, classy, cocktail bar that served nice drinks with an excellent street view of garbage bags being piled up right in front that ruined it all.