They crawled to the surface as the coronaviruses roiled New York City and feasted on scraps in streets, parks and mounds of garbage. The city's rats were affected by diners abandoning the indoors for outdoor dining.
The data shows that there are more of them than in the past.
People have called the city's 311 service request line about 7,400 rat reports through April. That is up from about 6,150 during the same period last year, and up from roughly the first four months of the last pre-pandemic year.
In the first four months of the year, the number of occurrences was the highest since at least 2010, the first year online records are available. In all of 2010 there were about 10,500 reports and in all of last year there were about 25,000.
The situation might have been more visible if the rat population had increased.
With more people spending time outdoors, will rat spotting increase?
Matt Frye is a pest management specialist for the state of New York who is based at Cornell University.
While a return to pre-pandemic routines is exciting after two years of COVID-imposed lifestyle changes, it also means business as usual for rat problems that are directly tied.
New York City has a problem with rats. Every new generation of leaders has tried to find a better way to control the rodents.
When Mayor Eric Adams was the president of Brooklyn, he annoyed animal rights activists and upset some journalists by demonstrating a trap that used a bucket filled with soup to kill rats.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio spent tens of millions of dollars on efforts to reduce the rat population in targeted neighborhoods through more frequent trash pickup, more aggressive housing inspections, and the replacement of dirt basement floors in some apartment buildings with concrete.
The city launched a program to use dry ice to suffocate rats in their burrows, once demonstrating the technique for reporters at an event where workers chased but never caught one of the fleeing rodents.
During a recent news conference in Times Square, Adams announced the city's latest effort: padlocked curbside trash bins intended to reduce the big piles of garbage bags that turn into a buffet for rodents.
The mayor said that you are tired of seeing food, waste and spillage and that you are tired of the smell.
Rats can be a public health concern.
At least 13 people were hospitalized last year because of a condition called leptospirosis. Humans are associated with rats.
As some cities consider making outdoor dining permanent, they are aware of a further increase in the rat population. Experts noticed a rise in rat populations in some of the country's largest cities.
Rats can live on less than an ounce of food a day, and rarely travel more than a city block to find food, according to rat scholars.
Diners in New York City are allowed to eat outside. Pizza Rat gained fame in 2015 after a video went viral showing him dragging a slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs.
There were less things to eat in the tunnels as people used the subway less.
Richard Reynolds, whose rat-hunting group for years periodically takes out teams of dogs to sniff out and kill vermin, said that restaurants shut down during the Pandemic.
Rats lie in wait for crumb in planter boxes. They are about to lunge in the storm drain.
Dylan Viner, a Brooklyn resident, recently hit a dead rat with his bicycle. He and his friends have noticed a rise in the number of rats.
I have always had a fear of rats. Viner, a transplant from London, likes to keep his distance from rats, but he is not squeamish about snakes or bugs. It is when you see someone jump out in front of you and run from a dumpster or a restaurant.
He remembered taking a walk in the West Village, where a stride landed on one of the creatures.
He said that he screamed and ran. The rat might have made a noise.
He said that it was hard to know if it was mine or the rat.
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