![]() When they meet, they hunt, stalking New York’s rat-infested alleyways and housing projects to chase down the city’s pestilent whiskered menace. meets when its members can, sometimes as often as once a week. Ryders Alley is a famously rat-infested alleyway in Lower Manhattan “trencher-fed” is a 19th century term literally referring to a type of wooden bowl that was used to feed hunting hounds, but over time came to describe the hounds that lived together with their owners for use in group hunts. They are members of a group who go by the noms de guerre R.A.T.S., an acronym for Ryders Alley Trencher-fed Society. In City Hall Park, at 9:30 p.m., a small posse of dog enthusiasts has gathered under dim park lamps. For a rat, the time in between is the Golden Hour: the time to feed. On pickup days, which vary depending on neighborhood, bags are stacked high on sidewalks and left to sit, sometimes for hours, sometimes overnight-rotting and reeking-until a garbage truck comes to haul them away. In every neighborhood and borough, trash is collected in plastic bags and stored in apartment building courtyards and alleyway bins. The city’s residents and businesses produce about 50,000 tons of residential and commercial waste each day, much of it food waste-uneaten bagels and unwanted pizza crusts, fish bones and meat scraps, coffee grounds and vegetable peels. Tonight is trash night in Lower Manhattan, and where there is trash, there are rats. ![]()
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