Bed-Stuy Teems With Leaping, Scratching Rats, Local Says

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Ellie Miller only realized how bad the rodent problem was in Bed-Stuy when a rat leapt out of her garbage and scratched her on the arm.

"This is the stuff of nightmares," said the 44-year-old nurse said. "No one should be touched by rats on the upper body."

Miller has become newly aware of the rats teeming around Madison Street between Bedford and Nostrand avenues since the night on June 24 when she took out the detritus from a recent birthday party and was suddenly attacked.

The Bed-Stuy mom felt a stinging sensation and then looked down to the pavement and saw a rat scurrying away, she said. Now she sees rats everywhere.

"Just the other night we were sitting on our stoop and we saw like five rats running around," Miller said. "And it wasn't even dark yet."

On Miller's block, there have been 11 reported rat sightings in the past year, OpenTheBooks.com data show.

Miller has repeatedly called 311 to report the rats on her block, but said, "It doesn't seem like they are that concerned," so she's been left trying to find her own solutions.

The Bed-Stuy mom thought about putting out poison, but worries about the neighborhood's community of feral and pet cats.

Another solution is making her husband take out the trash.

Miller says her neighbors do a good job of keeping the block tidy, so she suspects the problem was a warm winter and ongoing construction on her block.

A recent New York Times article backs up her suspicions, blaming an increase in the wily rodents on gentrification.

Scientists told the Times a recent construction boom means burrows are being dug up, sending rats into streets littered with the trash from a thriving tourist trade.

311 rat complaints spiked to 17,353 in 2018 and city health inspections that found evidence of rats almost doubled over the past four years, the Times reported.

According to a RentHop study released last year, there is no neighborhood rats love more than Bed-Stuy, which accounted for 20 percent of rat complaints made in Brooklyn in 2017.

Mayor Bill de Blasio chose Bed-Stuy as one of the neighborhoods to focus on in his $32 million rat attack in 2017, which funded rat-proof, solar powered trash compactors and more frequent garbage pickups.

But as Miller and the New York Times both noted, rat populations are on the rise again this summer. Michael Deautsch, an entomologist with Long Island's Arrow Exterminating, told the Times the only answer is to keep combatting the problem.

“You can’t just go in and order an airstrike — and then leave,” Deautsch reportedly said. “Rat populations can rebound unless you are always pressing them.”

After the attack, Miller says she ran screaming into the house, doused her arm with rubbing alcohol and Face-Timed with an urgent care doctor who proscribed her antibiotics and told her she'd probably be fine.

And while Miller isn't showing symptoms of rat bite fever — an infectious and potentially fatal disease caused by bacteria rodents carry — she still has some concerns.

"It feels like normal but maybe that's because I'm turning into one of them," said Miller. "I keep waiting for special powers."

And what's her takeaway from the experience? It was, "Totally, totally gross."