Robert Corrigan holds a doctorate in urban rodentology from Purdue University, and students and colleagues call him the Rat Czar. As a boy growing up in East Flatbush, Corrigan fancied himself a terrestrial Jacques Cousteau; rats were his fish. Now he and his wife split their time between Indiana and New York City.
The other day, Corrigan, who has a company called RMC Consulting, was in town in his role as principal lecturer at the Rodent Control Academy, a three-day course in rat management, taught at the Department of Health, on Worth Street. It was a good time for a brushup: the city’s complaint hot line anticipates a record-breaking number of rat-related calls this year; one woman told the A.P. about an Upper West Side colony that resembles the “Burning Man of rats.” Every student in Corrigan’s course receives a five-pound binder—“the tools to apply a situational analysis to rat management,” he says. “The course covers anthropology, biology, and culture.”
On the second day of class, Corrigan took a lunch break with Caroline Bragdon, from the Office of Pest Control Services, who told him about a battle she was waging with another city agency, over an area in Brooklyn near the B.Q.E. “They want us to go in and bait,” she said. “But they don’t want to go in and clean the area!”
Corrigan, who is sixty-five and wears rimless glasses, shook his head. “Rats benefit because humans won’t talk to each other,” he said.
Students sign up months in advance to study with Corrigan. In the seventies, he worked for Fumex Sanitation, managing infestations in Manhattan restaurants. He consulted for the city’s Office of Pest Control Services. He taught rodentology at Purdue. In 2008, he was inducted into the Pest Management Professional Hall of Fame. When he’s not on the rat-lecture circuit, he takes consulting jobs. “I was in Galway recently,” he said. “It’s Europe, so those sewers are ancient. Perfect for rats. And then Philadelphia called. They wanted to make sure there weren’t any friends running around during the Pope’s visit.”
After lunch, Corrigan gave a PowerPoint presentation in a dim room on the second floor of the D.O.H. His lecture style is part professor, part Terminator. “I was once called to a hospital because a rat fell from the ceiling onto a patient’s bed,” he told the class. He showed a slide of the Pulitzer Fountain, in Central Park. “What happens in parks at night?” he asked.
“One big shadow,” Nick Branca, an exterminator from Ventura, California, said.
Corrigan dismisses the idea that the subway houses most of the city’s rats, calling it a “Hollywoodism.” “When it’s dark at night, you’ll hear them in our parks. By the trees, in the bushes,” he said. He explained the next day’s field experiment—the last bit before the final exam. “You all will be doing your observations during the day. You might not see rats. But what you will see are the environmental conditions and clues that indicate rats are there.”
In the morning, the students set out, in groups, to five potential rat hot spots: Columbus Park, Collect Pond Park, the J Train stop at Foley Square, Cortlandt Alley, and the municipal buildings on Lafayette Street. “New York alleys are loaded with details—if you are a keen observer,” Corrigan advised.
Branca’s group—three exterminators, a sales manager from the company that makes the Ketch-All mousetrap, and a D.O.H. trainee—convened at the catch basin on the corner of White and Lafayette Streets. The curbside drain was damp. Clue No. 1: rats love water.
The D.O.H. guy crouched down in front of a nearby building. “You see 80-82?” he said, referring to its address. “Three openings.”
The group made notes: shallow burrows under the doorsill, some no larger than a half dollar, stuffed with shreds of paper and food scraps. “We have an active site!” another team member shouted. He said that he would recommend an integrated-pest-management approach that involved filling in the holes with cement.
The group continued north on Cortlandt Alley. Branca paused at a chicken bone on the pavement. Inches from the bone was the shuttered entrance to a sidewalk elevator. “Freight elevators are notorious gathering places,” he said. “Food shipments. If you go to the bottom of one, you’ll get eaten alive.”
One member of the group noticed a trail of sebum from the bone to a door. He knelt to inspect a rusting vent at the base, surrounded by oily marks. A small dark mass darted across the vent. “A whisker!” the Ketch-All guy said. “Did you see that?”
As the rat scholars headed to the next site, they noticed litter along the sidewalks. “This is what we deal with here,” one said. “Human rodents.” ♦