He may have deceived us.
New York may not be the most rat-infested place in America after all. As first reported by the Post.
Pest control is something of an epidemic, with interest in pest control surging 165% nationwide in June 2024 compared to June 2023, according to Yelp, a popular site for people looking to read customer reviews and book pest control services.
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When we looked at the number of times each query was typed per million searches, we found a dramatic increase.
“Nothing can put a damper on summer get-togethers like bugs or rodents in your space,” Tara Lewis, Yelp trends expert and vice president of community extension, said in a statement.
Ultimately, California topped the nation for searches for rat-related pest control, followed by Wyoming, Washington DC, New Mexico, and Wisconsin.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t increases here in the Big Apple: New York City saw a 107% increase in demand for “rodent exterminators” in June 2024 compared to June 2023, Yelp told The Post exclusively. Still, that wasn’t enough to propel the state to the top of the list.
Meanwhile, nationally, cockroach extermination topped the list with searches increasing 323% in June 2024 compared to June last year.
Spider exterminators are also in high demand, with searches across all 50 states increasing 236 percent in response to an infestation of the silver spider, which can grow to the size of a human hand and have invaded the US for more than a decade.
After crunching the numbers, Washington DC was estimated to be the hardest hit overall, topping the list (insert political joke here).
The capital city is currently the number one searched area for bedbug, cockroach and mosquito control.
New York ranked fifth for bed bug inspections, sixth for cockroach control, and 34th for rat control services.
The news comes a year after the Big Apple dropped in Orkin’s annual ranking of the dirtiest cities, coming in third behind Los Angeles and Chicago and just above Washington DC.
Does this mean Eric Adams’ war on rats, which the mayor blames in large part for the exodus of New Yorkers out of the state, is working?
The politician, who has repeatedly declared that he “hates rats” and confessed to being “obsessed with killing” them, has unveiled several new plans to control the pesky animals.
Christopher Sadowski
The city has introduced an ambitious plan to better manage all waste, requiring residents to separate food and garden waste, introducing new trash and recycling bins and limiting rubbish collection times, but many people still complain that their rubbish is overflowing.
In this concrete jungle, he has tried using dry ice to exterminate rats, proposed a rat birth control program and even created the city’s first “rodent control officer,” Katherine Corradi, at a salary of $155,000 a year.
When contacted by The Post, the health department A May 2024 statement declared that rat sightings had decreased year-on-year in 12 of the previous 13 months.
“Under Mayor Adams’ leadership, we have taken serious steps to address the 16 billion pounds of trash New Yorkers generate each year,” Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner for public affairs and customer experience at the New York City Department of Sanitation, told The Post.
“Our efforts to remove this rubbish from the streets and place it in secure containers that are rodent-proof are working.”
