Late last month, New York City posted a job listing for a new “director of rodent mitigation”, a title that was soon slimmed down to “Rat Tsar”, to work under the direction of Mayor Eric Adams and his deputy mayor for operations, Meera Joshi.
Taking on New York’s rat population, the listing said, would take someone who is “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” and possessed of both “stamina and stagecraft”. The new Rat Tsar, it added would need a “swashbuckling attitude, crafty humor and general aura of badassery”.
