Lots of people say they’re revealing the darkest secrets of Washington DC. But here’s one of the darkest, which you’ve maybe not heard: rats. And considerably worse than in other major cities.
Not small ones, mind you, but huge rats that roam the DC streets at night like marauding urban toughs keeping law-abiding folk off the streets. I go on walks in my neighborhood late at night and I’m often approached by members of this clan of crude urban rodentia, though thankfully I’ve never come to blows with one, or truly been accosted. (TPM is a bit imposing himself.)
There’s a steady rain tonight in the capital. And it was around 4 AM when I walked into my bedroom to go to sleep. Or so I thought. I walked to my bedroom window and looked down the four stories to the brick-paved alleyway behind my apartment and there I saw two huge rats, in my clear sight for 30 or 40 seconds, chasing each other down the alley amidst the spattering rain. I live in a fairly nice part of the city and I’m not talking about mice but massive rats that it took me a few moments at a distance of 70 or 80 feet to distinguish from dogs or cats.
(I’d say their bodies alone had to be almost a foot long — though this page says the kind of species we’re getting overrun by, the Norway rat, averages a body length between 7 to 9 inches.)
For years the city government has been saying they’re going to crack down on the problem. But, as the conservatives would probably want to say, this is a problem Washington just can’t seem to solve.
