10 December 2020 - Rats take over Manhattan Chipotle
Rats besiege New York Chipotle, eating avocados and attacking staff
Poppy Noor (The Guardian, 09/12/2020)
As columnist Mary Schmich once said, in life, there are certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, and – I’m going to add one – you can always count on New York for a good old rat story.
Today that story is of the Upper Manhattan Chipotle food chain rats, who have been feasting on avocados and burritos – and, by the sounds of it – disturbed staff.
At first glance, it might sound like small potatoes compared to when the CDC had to warn against New York’s cannibal rats during the pandemic. Nor does it sound quite as frightful as the starved super rats so desperate to dine out that they threw themselves at horrified New Yorkers who were dining alfresco.
The Rats Have Taken Over a Chipotle
Bridget Read (The Cut, 09/12/2020)
We were warned that they were coming. In April, when the pandemic shut down the New York City rat community’s usual food supply of scraps, urban rodentologists predicted a rat infestation the likes of which even this city had never seen. They foretold furious rat battles, cannibalism, and infanticide among rats fighting in a restaurant-food-less wasteland, Mad Max-style.
Then they came. One man knows this all too well, a man who fell into a sidewalk sinkhole full of rats, a man named Leonard Shoulders. As he lay in the sinkhole, Leonard’s shoulders, ironically, were covered in rats, according to a lawsuit he recently filed.
Now the rats have moved on to claiming an entire business for their new rat kingdom. A Chipotle on West 169th street has been taken over by a group of hostile, hungry rats who, workers say, are the size of small cats, love biting humans, and enjoy avocados.
A New York City Chipotle is closed indefinitely after workers say a rat infestation led to four employees being bitten
Mary Meisenzahl (Business Insider, 09/12/2020)
A New York City Chipotle location is closed because of a major rat problem, The New York Post first reported.
The West 169th Street location closed in late November after rats chewed through wires for the computer system, employees told The Post. Before that, workers were forced to kill dozens of rats and four employees have been bitten, the publication reported.
In a statement, Chipotle Chief Corporate Affairs Officer and head of food safety Laurie Schalow acknowledged the pest problem, blamed neighboring closed restaurants, and said the location is closed indefinitely.
C.D.C. Warns of ‘Aggressive’ Rats Searching for Food During Shutdowns
Mariel Padilla (The New York Times, 24/05/2020)
Humans are not the only ones who miss dining out.
As restaurants and other businesses have closed during the coronavirus pandemic, rats may become more aggressive as they hunt for new sources of food, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.
Environmental health and rodent control programs may see an increase in service requests related to “unusual or aggressive” rodent behavior, the agency said on its website on Thursday.