The city of New York is getting mighty creative in finding ways to solve its multi-million-dollar rat problem.
During a Thursday press conference, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams revealed the latest upcoming attempt to kill the epidemic — a boozy rat trap called the Ekomille.
The solution involves luring the rodents with bait before drowning them in alcohol, CNN reports.
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After a successful trial, the trap will be rolled out in Brooklyn neighbourhoods with the worst rat problems.
The Ekomille, created by Rat Trap Inc., prides itself on being much better for the environment, given it doesn’t use harmful chemicals.
It attracts the rats with food, capturing them and dropping them through a trap door into an alcoholic substance. The animals are rendered unconscious before drowning occurs.
The solution, their website reads, acts as a “stun” agent so they die immediately. Furthermore, the alcohol prevents the rats from decomposing, so no nasty smells will occur.
“It knocks them out and they drown eventually,” Anthony Giaquinto, the company’s president, said at a press conference, the AFP news agency reports.
The tray can reportedly hold 80 rat carcasses, ensuring a multitude of catches before emptying.
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While the machine was being tested for one month in Brooklyn, over 107 rats were caught and killed.
During the Thursday press conference, journalists were treated to quite a sight — a sanitation worker pulling dead rat bodies out of the machine, proving its functionality.
This is part of a very long fight between the city and its tailed inhabitants.
In 2017, the city pledged US$32-million to fight the problem, installing rat-resistant garbage bins and tightening waste rules.
They even tested, The Guardian reports, a liquid bait that would render rats unable to reproduce.
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