Move over, New York City, Chicago is coming on strong!
The city of Chicago, where former Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel is mayor, has been named in a new study the “rat capital” of the nation.
The study, published by online apartment search service RentHop, found that there were 50,963 complaints made to the city last year about rats.
When comparing the number of complaints per 100,000 residents, RentHop said, “Chicago topped the list with 1876.09 complaints per 100,000 residents,” the Daily Mail reported.
“The study also found that the number of complaints made by Chicago residents jumped 55 per cent since 2014,” the Mail reported.
City residents are used to it.
One resident says she’s become used to seeing rats scurrying in the alleys of her Logan Square neighborhood. Garbage cans — even tightly lidded ones — often end up with holes where the pesky rodents likely gnawed to find a recent meal, she said.
“It’s part of living in a city,” Norma Rios-Sierra told the Chicago Tribune. “Even during the day, you’ll see them fly through the alley.”
New York City was a distant second with 19,152 complaints, followed by Washington, D.C. with 5,036 complaints, and Boston with 2,488 complaints, RentHop found.
“Dr. Dylan Frederickson, veterinarian at Boulevard Veterinary in Logan Square, said he’s lived in other cities like Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin, but has never experienced such a dense rat population before,” the Tribune reported.
“I’ve never seen anything like the rat infestation that we have in Chicago,” he said.
But don’t worry, the rat infestation in the Ratty City isn’t affecting Chicago’s other strong suit: murder. Already, there’s been 290 murders in the city, and we’re not even into the dog days of summer when the murder rate usually skyrockets.
Good job, Rahm!