Bloodthirsty and with a killer instinct: New York has for the first time an anti-rat supersheriff, and it’s a woman. Mayor Eric Adams, for whom the fight against rats is one of the three pillars to improve the quality of life in the metropolis, has appointed Kathleen Corradi, a former elementary school teacher, to head the task force charged with exterminating the millions of rodents that infest the Big Apple.
Four months ago the town hall had launched an advertisement looking for a suitable person for the new position: 900 candidates had presented themselves to the appeal. “Bloodthirsty” and “with murderous instincts to fight a prolific and tireless enemy” were two of the qualifications required for the post. Corradi, who in his role as a teacher worked on the rat extermination of metropolitan schools, has shown that he can do it ever since, a ten-year-old girl horrified by having seen the carcass of a rat along the railroad tracks of Long Island, she launched a collection of signatures in the neighborhood to successfully convince the authorities to exterminate the area.
“The job is tailor-made for her,” admitted Adams, a former Dem policeman who experienced first-hand what the rat emergency means for New York: in January the mayor was fined for the third time for the presence of rodents in his Brooklyn home. Adams has made the fight against rats one of the key directives of his administration: like crime and the presence of homeless people on the streets, they are in his opinion the symptom of an urban disorder that must be contained at all costs if metropolis what it was before the decline from Covid. In reality, the problem for New York is very long-standing: in its five Boroughs there are as many rats as there are inhabitants, and Charles Dickens already complained about their presence when he visited the city in 1842. Other mayors, from Rudy Giuliani to Bill de Blasio, have tried to eradicate them, and yet Corradi is the first person in the new role.
With a salary of 155,000 dollars a year, the new czarina (as the Americans call the multidisciplinary managers) will coordinate the activities of the various competent departments – primarily those of health and urban sanitation – to achieve the objective. «I will be your new sheriff, I have experience with rats», she declared after the appointment: «They are the symptom of systemic problems that include waste disposal, health, housing and economic justice».