Rats : Observations On The History And Habitat Of The City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants Part 2

*Just as Norway rats did not come from Norway, German c.o.c.kroaches did not come from Germany; more likely, they came from Africa. In Germany, German c.o.c.kroaches are known as French c.o.c.kroaches or Russian c.o.c.kroaches. In Russia, they are known as Prussian roaches. One theory has it that American c.o.c.kroaches were brought over from Africa by slave traders. American c.o.c.kroaches are also known as Croton bugs because they arrived in New York City through the water pipes laid in to carry water from the Croton reservoir system, in upstate New York.

Chapter 7 7.

UNREPRESENTED MAN.

WE ARE FOREVER complimenting the so-called Great Men, forever scrutinizing their glory-gaining actions, the endeavors that light w w up the past like torches in a great hall. In "Representative Men," Emerson writes: "Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circ.u.mstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them." It is likewise that the nature in which rats exist calls to mind those lives that are not recalled and honored, whose careers are not reexamined in histories-the lives that seem to be unnatural and even ratty or at least low-down but are not, actually. For isn't it the case that the life that exists in the sulfurous swamp, in the stink-laden dreck at the bottom of a bog, is as fertile as that in the alpine waterfall, if not more so, even if it is less cla.s.sically picturesque? When we look at rats, we are thus compelled to look at the history of the lives in their midst, to search for the Unrepresented Men. To quote Emerson yet again: "Each man is by secret liking connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is; as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions." So it is that Jesse Gray is, in my rat-interested mind, the agent and interpreter of rats. Jesse Gray was a tenant organizer in Harlem in the early sixties who screamed and scratched and hissed at the people in charge of the city but didn't really have much luck until he used rats. up the past like torches in a great hall. In "Representative Men," Emerson writes: "Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circ.u.mstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them." It is likewise that the nature in which rats exist calls to mind those lives that are not recalled and honored, whose careers are not reexamined in histories-the lives that seem to be unnatural and even ratty or at least low-down but are not, actually. For isn't it the case that the life that exists in the sulfurous swamp, in the stink-laden dreck at the bottom of a bog, is as fertile as that in the alpine waterfall, if not more so, even if it is less cla.s.sically picturesque? When we look at rats, we are thus compelled to look at the history of the lives in their midst, to search for the Unrepresented Men. To quote Emerson yet again: "Each man is by secret liking connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is; as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions." So it is that Jesse Gray is, in my rat-interested mind, the agent and interpreter of rats. Jesse Gray was a tenant organizer in Harlem in the early sixties who screamed and scratched and hissed at the people in charge of the city but didn't really have much luck until he used rats.

Jesse Gray was not tall but he looked a lot bigger than he was, especially in the winter, when he was always bundled up in layers and running from a picket line outside of City Hall or outside the police department or else stopping by the home of someone who had no heat. If you knocked on his door and the a.s.sistant answered and you said, "Mr. Gray?" the a.s.sistant would reply, "No, I'm Mr. Brown." People described him as nervous or agitated, as "a formidable bundle of energy," in one reporter's words. His distinguishing characteristics included a small mustache and two large bucketeeth, which jutted out when he flashed the wry smile that was indicative of a sarcastic sense of humor. Once, after he was found guilty of obstructing the police as they attempted to evict a family from a rat-infested apartment, a newspaper reporter asked if the jail sentence would curtail his operations on behalf of renters. His face lit up and he smiled his big, toothy grin. "Rather, it will serve to increase them," he said.

Gray was born in Tunica, Louisiana, a little town sixty miles up the Mississippi from Baton Rouge, one of ten children. He attended college on and off for a few years, then worked variously as a merchant marine, a short-order cook, a waiter, and a tailor. In New York, he worked on the docks for a while. "My real school was the waterfront and the union," he used to say. In the winter of 1952, when his heat went out in the Harlem apartment where he was living with his wife and children, he joined a tenant organization, called the Harlem Tenants Council. Asked about his inspiration for organizing people on behalf of their rights as citizens, he said, "I was cold."

For years, Jesse Gray worked out of an office on 117th Street, a neat and spa.r.s.ely decorated little hole-in-the-wall that was just off Fifth Avenue in Harlem. The history of Harlem is, like that of many New York neighborhoods, the history of migrations and change, and one way to sum it up would be like this: Harlem was first settled by Dutch farmers, who named it Nieuw Haarlem and prized it for its remoteness. When the farmland failed in the 1880s, the Dutch were replaced by Irish squatters, who, when brownstones were built, were replaced by European Jews looking to escape the crowds of the Lower East Side, who, in the 1920s, moved to the Upper West Side to escape the overcrowding in Harlem, where they were replaced by African-Americans, who found less racism in the neighborhood than in other parts of the city and also cheap housing. Harlem grew to be a cultural capital, until, first, the Depression destroyed its economy, and then, problems such as heroin addiction ravaged its inhabitants, so that eventually 117th Street, like the bulk of the streets in Harlem, was in decay. Jesse Gray's office was once described as "a tiny oasis of order and cleanliness in one of the most appallingly filthy blocks of Harlem."

Staffed by scores of volunteers, Gray's operation was continually on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked for ten years, agitating relentlessly against landlords without much success, the big problem being lack of sufficient confidence amongst the renters to undertake rent strikes-people were afraid to ignore the eviction notices. In 1959, Gray organized a small rent strike that failed. Then, in 1963, Gray organized the first rent strike utilizing rats. This time renters in 250 buildings went on strike, in an area bounded by 118th Street and 125th Street and Park and Eighth Avenues-thirteen thousand people who were "outraged by their own misery," as Ebony Ebony magazine wrote. Photographs of the buildings on strike showed ramshackle apartments with hole-riddled windows that often did not close, with caved-in ceilings, with walls shedding plaster. A portrait of a family in magazine wrote. Photographs of the buildings on strike showed ramshackle apartments with hole-riddled windows that often did not close, with caved-in ceilings, with walls shedding plaster. A portrait of a family in Ebony Ebony showed a group of children huddled under blankets during the day, seeking shelter from the winter wind in their bedroom; tenants described heatless, c.o.c.kroach- filled conditions. During this second strike, Gray allied with local church officials, with labor leaders, with Harlem politicians-he organized the ghetto. "Bring a rat to court!" Gray told the tenants. They had ample opportunity to do so. According to Health Department statistics, one half of the housing in Harlem was rat-infested. showed a group of children huddled under blankets during the day, seeking shelter from the winter wind in their bedroom; tenants described heatless, c.o.c.kroach- filled conditions. During this second strike, Gray allied with local church officials, with labor leaders, with Harlem politicians-he organized the ghetto. "Bring a rat to court!" Gray told the tenants. They had ample opportunity to do so. According to Health Department statistics, one half of the housing in Harlem was rat-infested.

People brought dead rats and live rats. People dangled rats by their tails for the newspaper photographers; people displayed rats spread out on newspapers, like fresh fish they'd bought at market. People wore rubber rats pinned to their jackets. People testified about rats. "The rats are part of our family," one woman said. "I've seen kids try to pet them," said another. Tenants brought rats to civil court and they brought them to City Hall.*

Gray's second attempt was helped by that fact that the black community in Harlem was emboldened by the recent gains of the civil rights movement in the South, as was Jesse Gray. And this time when he asked the rent strikers to ignore the eviction notices, they did. "Our most important aim is to give the people a consciousness of their rights," he said. "Then landlords will wake up downtown downtown and come and come uptown uptown and see what is happening." Gray equated the tenants to and see what is happening." Gray equated the tenants to Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus-and it is one of a very small number of pro-rat comments I know of in the annals of New York City history. "The tenants are like rats now," he said. "Rats feel their power, and they come out in broad daylight and just sit there. Once the tenants feel their their power, they stop running, they're not afraid anymore. We've shown them-and they see now-that they have rights whether they live on Park Avenue or Lenox Avenue." power, they stop running, they're not afraid anymore. We've shown them-and they see now-that they have rights whether they live on Park Avenue or Lenox Avenue."

As the winter went on, the strike doubled in size. Gray and the volunteers of the Community Council urged the city to take over the dilapidated buildings. Gray called for "a ma.s.s rehabilitation of the ghettos." The courts sided with the rent strike; a judge ordered repairs. To this day, it's the largest rent strike the city has ever seen. In January of 1964, the strike spread from Harlem to the Bronx and the Lower East Side, including Hispanic neighborhoods. Now, at protest rallies, the signs that said NO RENT FOR RATS and FREEDOM NOW and JAIL THE SLUMLORDS were accompanied by signs that said LAS RAT AS. Newspapers reported on rat bites that would not have been deemed newsworthy before the strike. "The rat seemed afraid of no one," said the mother of a five-year-old boy who was bitten on the face, a day after their building had joined the rent strike. (The landlord in that case responded, "What can I say? These things happen.") At a rat-oriented rent strike rally, Gray shouted, "Rats are eating up this community. We want emanc.i.p.ation now from rotten landlords!"

Gray and the Community Council held planning sessions in the crowded community centers and sometimes in jails: a photograph taken at the time shows Gray in a tattered suit and tie in a jail cell with his similarly attired colleagues surrounded by benches full of drowsy men. Then, Gray and his colleagues raced out to apartments, to keep the rent strikers from being evicted-with shouts, with court doc.u.ments, with barricades, with hurried heaps of worn-out furniture. One day in January 1964, Gray was at the apartment of a man named Luther Brown on West 118th Street. Gray was with some students from City College and a few members of the Northern Student Alliance-that people were forced to live amongst rats was seen as an injustice worth fighting for by student activists at the time. In the hallway of the apartment, there was a scuffle with some city marshals when Gray and his entourage would not leave the apartment. Everyone was arrested-Gray was always sc.r.a.pping with the police and with City Marshal Henry Lazarus. "The tenant had no knowledge of the impending eviction," Gray said, as he was led in handcuffs down the narrow, rickety steps. "The police department reacts with great speed to uphold the law for the slumlords. We ask them to show the same speed in arresting the slumlords and protecting the people."

After being booked at the West 123rd Street precinct, Gray was taken to Harlem Hospital where he was examined for injuries resulting from a police officer's foot in the back. The family was evicted. Homer Bigart, the Times Times correspondent who became famous covering the Vietnam War a few years later, covered Marshal Lazarus as he broke open the door of apartment 4E with a crowbar-and it seems appropriate that a future war correspondent was on hand in a rat-pit-like Harlem apartment. "Mr. Brown and some friends retreated to an inner room, throwing up successive barricades of furniture to stall the eviction," Bigart wrote. "After the City Marshal and his men had removed the furniture from the apartment, Laura Brown and her five children, who share the place with her brother, Luther, re-entered to salvage any remnants of the household. They found only a ba.s.sinet and a broken mirror." correspondent who became famous covering the Vietnam War a few years later, covered Marshal Lazarus as he broke open the door of apartment 4E with a crowbar-and it seems appropriate that a future war correspondent was on hand in a rat-pit-like Harlem apartment. "Mr. Brown and some friends retreated to an inner room, throwing up successive barricades of furniture to stall the eviction," Bigart wrote. "After the City Marshal and his men had removed the furniture from the apartment, Laura Brown and her five children, who share the place with her brother, Luther, re-entered to salvage any remnants of the household. They found only a ba.s.sinet and a broken mirror."

WE KNOW WHERE GEORGE WASHINGTON dined when he was in New York, in addition to where he slept, as he just barely stayed alive against the British, or we think we know-even the lore of Representative Men is murky. And then there are the lives-lives that are, though not George Washington's, perhaps in some crucial way just as historic-whose record, if it exists at all, evaporates and fades, even now, as garbage putrefies and is dispersed through the city by the tread of shoe, the ruts of a radial tire. So Jesse Gray and the rent strikers have faded-even though the rent strike worked.

The city pa.s.sed a $1 million rat extermination bill because of the rent strike, for example, and financed the repairs on dozens of buildings; in the summer of 1964 only 60 or 70 of the 325 apartment buildings originally on strike were still striking. At a press conference with a deputy buildings commissioner, Gray said he was "well satisfied," though there were still buildings he hoped the city would take over from the landlords. "It's not enough," he said. In 1967, Jesse Gray brought a rat in a cage to Congress, where Southern Democrats ridiculed a federal rat control bill, calling for a less expensive release of cats in urban areas, predicting a "federal ratocracy." As Gray's group was arrested, they chanted, "Rats cause riots. We don't need a riot bill. We need a rat bill." President Johnson secured $40 million in extermination funds. Later on, in 1971, President Nixon proposed cutting federal rat control funding, but reinstated the money, in 1972, after being criticized for the way he dealt with rats.

An even less visible but more significant result of Gray's rat strike was the way in which Gray's gra.s.sroots group energized gra.s.sroots groups like it all over the city, and possibly the U.S.-one historian wrote that Gray's strike helped sp.a.w.n the National Tenants' Organization, in 1969. It was the time in America when urban renewal was paving over old neighborhoods in New York in the name of progress and relocating them for the sake of highways, for sterile planned cities that were like laboratory cities, not at all wild. The chief formulator of urban renewal in New York and, because of his influence, in cities all over America was Robert Moses, the city's master builder. Most historians argue that Robert Moses and his destructive policies were finally halted by a liberal elite-groups of upper-middle-cla.s.s homeowners who organized in Greenwich Village, for instance-but some people say it was the power of the tenants movement that stopped Robert Moses. "It is not too much to say that these sometimes lonely activists . . . shaped the awareness of the dignity and integrity of neighborhoods that would become the most significant ingredient of the community-power movement of the 1960s," wrote Joel Schwartz in a history of the tenants movements. "The tenants forlorn protests . . . helped mold the sense of injustice that would eventually change the course of urban redevelopment in New York and across the nation."

People who liked Jesse Gray liked him for stirring things up. People who did not like him thought he was just stirring things up. During the rent strike, Gray was continually hara.s.sed by the police, and he hara.s.sed the police back. He led strikes on police headquarters, at one point calling for the resignation of the police commissioner, Michael J. Murphy, who Gray deemed "a servant of the slumlords." Murphy, in turn, accused Gray of creating "an atmosphere of violence." This charge went back and forth, and at one point, Malcolm X, who was attending Gray's rent strike rallies now, argued that he thought the police wanted Harlem residents to resort to violence. "Then they'll be free to put clubs to the side of your head," Malcolm X said. That summer, when a boy was shot by a police officer, there was rioting in Harlem. Gray spoke at a rally at a Mount Morris church on 122nd Street. The theme was "Is Harlem Mississippi?" and when he spoke, Gray, wearing a bandage on his head, said that police had beaten him. "There is only one thing that can correct the situation, and that's guerrilla warfare," he said from the pulpit. He was quoted as calling for "one hundred skilled black revolutionaries who are ready to die." Another less riotous gathering was held at another church down the street, where the aunt of the boy who was shot was in tears and describing how the boy had defended himself against gunfire with the lid of a garbage can.

The next night there was a riot in Harlem. When accused of starting the riot, Jesse Gray testified that he had been, in his words, "trying to finish a doc.u.ment on European history." The city got a court order against any demonstrations by Gray above 110th Street. He held a rally at 109th Street. "It's the landlords who should be enjoined from operating in Harlem, not us," he said. He talked of fearing for his life. He quoted police officers as saying, "There's Jesse Gray, let's get him." After the riot, Mayor Wagner asked Martin Luther King to visit New York. King advised the city on civil rights. A few years later, the police department formed its first civilian review commission.

The rent strike marked Jesse Gray's heyday. After protesting with rats, he faded in and out of politics. He ran for mayor and dropped out after accusations that he had faked his pet.i.tion signatures-a long list of names in alphabetical order, all allegedly witnessed by Jesse Gray. In 1970, he ran for Congress, arguing, "The money from five days in Vietnam could rebuild Harlem." His campaign slogan was "n.o.body is behind Jesse Gray except the people." He lost. He won a state a.s.sembly seat in 1972 and lost it in 1974. He was in the news and nearly sent to jail when his wife said he was not paying child support. He was accused of being a Communist, even though he probably wasn't. And he was accused of distributing anti-Semitic literature, which he did. His son, Jesse Junior was arrested on several occasions for selling drugs and finally sent to prison as a heroin dealer. Gray was quoted in 1977 as saying that he had not dropped out of the civil rights movement and that his silence should "not be misinterpreted as sleeping." Shortly thereafter, he went into a coma, which lasted for several years until his death, on January 2, 1982, in the Bronx. I don't know how he died, but I know that at the time tuberculosis, cancer, and diabetes were epidemic in Harlem. In 1990, the New England journal of Medicine New England journal of Medicine reported that men in Harlem had a shorter life expectancy than men in Bangladesh. A study in 2003, even after rapid gentrification had transformed parts of the neighborhood, indicated that one out of every four children in Harlem had asthma. reported that men in Harlem had a shorter life expectancy than men in Bangladesh. A study in 2003, even after rapid gentrification had transformed parts of the neighborhood, indicated that one out of every four children in Harlem had asthma.

Once, I trailed off through Harlem, along streets I'd never been on before, looking for Jesse Gray's old headquarters or anyone who might remember him. I walked with a pace enthused by the knowledge of this rat-affiliated man, seeing the usual telltale signs of rats that I now see on all my walks everywhere in the city since spending time in the alley, but now also seeing the ghosts of rent strikers, of ancient community activists, of renters rising against rats. I walked down 125th Street, still the Main Street of Harlem, where some empty lots have evidence of rat infestation and some lots have brand-new national chain stores, and where one lot was surrounded by a wooden wall decorated with quotes from famous black Americans, such as Malcolm X: "Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can chart a course for our future. Only by knowing where we've been can we know where we are and look to where we want to go." Gray's rent strike headquarters had been demolished; like a lot of Harlem, the neighborhood is full of new housing now, some of it affordable for the people who live there, some not. I asked some people on the corner about Jesse Gray, an older couple. The man couldn't remember; the woman squinted her eyes. "I didn't know him personally, you see, but I understand that people spoke highly of him," she said. Then I saw a guy sitting on a beat-up old chair and leaning against a fence, right across from where Gray's old building had been. He was talking to himself and I wasn't sure if I should bother him, but I took a chance and said h.e.l.lo. As it happened, the guy remembered Jesse Gray and he remembered Jesse Gray's old building-he'd been in the neighborhood for decades. "Man, there's a lot of history in that spot right there, I'll tell you, that's for sure," he said.

* My father used to own a printing shop down near the South Street Seaport on a part of Pearl Street that is no longer there, and months after I had begun researching Jesse Gray and his rent strikes, I learned that my mother had been walking to my father's print shop one morning when she pa.s.sed a rent strike demonstration at City Hall. She had no idea what the demonstration was about until she got caught up in it. The police began rounding people into paddy wagons. The next thing she knew she was being arrested, though the police released her when she explained that she was just on her way to work. She also told them she was pregnant. In fact, she was pregnant with me. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to hear that I was once sort of arrested during a Jesse Gray rent strike demonstration.

Chapter 8.

FOOD.

THE DIET OF the city rat is garbage, the refuse of man. But which garbage? Which particular kind of refuse? And exactly how much trash does a rat eat? One evening toward the end of summer, my thoughts traipsed in these repulsive particulars. It seemed to me to be a perfect night for a rat's food-gathering. If a wide-winged hawk at dawn might be satisfied with a steady wind and a clear sky as he ascends over a river basin made flat and treeless by the ancient run of a river, then so might a rat be pleased upon arising at ten o'clock on a Thursday night in the alley: the tide of garbage was just coming in, the doors of the restaurants opening for the jettisoning of garbage bags, then slamming tight, like clams. In the streets, there was light summer-evening traffic-young people darting into bars, older people coming more slowly out of bars, a man wandering alone, walking, stopping, walking a little more. I took my position at the front of the alley, just in from the evening street.

I heard the sounds of nighttime in an alley: the far-off moan of hydraulics from a truck digesting trash; the toss of ice and stale flower water from a delicatessen into a gutter; a garbage bag, first lofted and, soon, crashing to the ground with a splatch. splatch. Exterminators often note that rats are attentive not only to the sight and smell of trash but to the very sounds it makes, and my observations confirmed this. Initially, I supposed that the rats were waiting in their nests for the garbage's arrival. But then, sometime later, after watching the next fresh garbage bags thrown into the alley, I saw the rats come to the food again, and I realized that they were already out of their nests, already in the alley, roaming, foraging through bits of the previous evening's garbage, licking up fetid water, a portion of the two ounces they require each day. Exterminators often note that rats are attentive not only to the sight and smell of trash but to the very sounds it makes, and my observations confirmed this. Initially, I supposed that the rats were waiting in their nests for the garbage's arrival. But then, sometime later, after watching the next fresh garbage bags thrown into the alley, I saw the rats come to the food again, and I realized that they were already out of their nests, already in the alley, roaming, foraging through bits of the previous evening's garbage, licking up fetid water, a portion of the two ounces they require each day.

And then they began to eat. Immediately, I thought of S. A. Barnett's 1956 rat eating study, summarized thusly by Jackson in 1982: "Mice tend to be nibblers; rats are more gluttonous." An example: a healthy male moved out from his nest area on the east side of the alley. He proceeded quickly along a curb, paused at a gap in the curb, then raced across the open s.p.a.ce. He paused again, then moved back behind the garbage bags. This was a characteristic rat movement in the alley, a targeted series of bursts and pauses. Unfortunately, I could not see behind the plastic bag, so I do not know if the rat made his own hole-a simple rip-or if there was a preexisting hole, but quickly the rat was inside the garbage bag. The reader may ask why I did not go behind the bag and investigate more thoroughly, and my response is twofold. First, I was careful not to disturb the rats, for I was there to meticulously observe but not disrupt, and second, each time I approached the trash berms, even when I was fairly certain that they were ratless, an announcement would come over my internal public address system and, by way of reminder, say, "What the h.e.l.l are you thinking? There could still be rats in there!" There could still be rats in there!" It was Coleridge who wrote, "Fear gives sudden instincts of skill." It was Coleridge who wrote, "Fear gives sudden instincts of skill."

A rat in a garbage bag is a keynote detail of the city landscape; if a rat were considered natural and people flocked to alleys to watch them gorge on the city's offscourings, the urban rejectamenta, then I would gladly send a postcard of my alley, which would, in such a world, be considered practically pristine, a wildlife refuge. Once in the bag, the rat is free to forage, using smell and touch and taste. The view from outside the bag is of the black plastic writhing and stretching. In my rat alley on this particular evening, the rat appeared to be working hard to consume one particular piece of garbage. I could not see the rat; I could see the rat lumps, though. Specifically, three short movements in the rat-shaped lump on the outside of the bag were followed by a larger expansion, at which point the lump moved to another area of the bag's interior. In four minutes, the rat emerged through a hole in the base of the bag with something in his mouth. On the western edge of the alley, adult rats were occupying other plastic bags, while younger rats were eating around around the bags, tugging at sc.r.a.ps that fell from the holes gouged out by the larger rats. A few minutes later, with so many rats appearing, I was thinking of bears at an Alaskan salmon stream. the bags, tugging at sc.r.a.ps that fell from the holes gouged out by the larger rats. A few minutes later, with so many rats appearing, I was thinking of bears at an Alaskan salmon stream.

In the s.p.a.ce of half an hour, it became clear that among the five garbage bags on the one side of the alley, the rats preferred the food in one garbage bag over the others. They were taking bits of this food back to their nests, so apparently satisfied were they with the safety of the alley and the quality of the food. The food that they were eating was white and stringy, and I had no idea what it was.

IT IS WRITTEN IN THE rat literature that a rat would starve in an alley surrounded by raw vegetables. Pioneering studies of rats eating garbage were conducted in an alley by a New Yorker named Martin W. Schein, who was born in Brooklyn in 1925. During World War II, Schein fought under General George Patton, in the Battle of the Bulge, after which he returned to New York to work as a rat catcher for the city. He went to Baltimore to catch and study rats in the alleys alongside Dave Davis-Schein was once named Baltimore's honorary rat catcher. When Schein died, in 1998, a memorial said: "Imagine Hemingway in looks and in his direct, nonsentimental style, yet generous and kind to a fault." Schein founded the Animal Behavior Society in 1964, and after he finished studying rats he went on to work with turkeys. An experiment of Schein's that is today considered a cla.s.sic in the field of animal behavior is called the "turkey on a stick," which showed that all that was necessary to inspire a male turkey to begin the mating-related behaviors was the female head. When working with garbage, Schein went into a block in Baltimore and dumped out a lot of garbage cans into one spot and separated it into edible and nonedible garbage. "In urban communities where natural rat-foods have been restricted by construction of buildings and the paving of streets, the rat has become dependent upon domestic refuse as a source of food," he wrote in a paper ent.i.tled "A Preliminary a.n.a.lysis of Garbage as Food for the Norway Rat." (Foods that would have been considered "natural" would include such things as plants and insects and small animals.) Schein found that on average one third of the garbage was edible. His hope was one day to be able to predict the number of rats in an area from pounds of refuse, but as best I can tell, he moved on to his turkey studies before accomplishing this. He had already shown a positive correlation between the number of rats and the amount of garbage. After a.n.a.lyzing the edibility of Baltimore garbage, he collected a lot of garbage from three different places-a college cafeteria, a grocery store, and a freight terminal-and he started feeding it to a group of rats. Schein had trapped rats from various alleys in Baltimore and transferred them to cages in an unused barn: city rats caged in the country. Here is a list of foods that the rats ate, in the order of rat preference: [image]

I looked at this list frequently while ratting and found it to be a good guide to seeking out rat feeding points in the city in general and in my rat alley in particular. Of course, the list is not completely reflective of modern New York City garbage; it does not mention fish garbage, which might be a bigger part of the rat's garbage diet where I was, so close to the Fulton Fish Market. (At Peck Slip, I once saw the carca.s.s of an Atlantic salmon that appeared to have been chewed upon by a rat, though the chewer could have been something else, I suppose.) Still, the list proved quite accurate. For instance, the rats in my alley rarely touched the raw carrots that were often scattered around, while they seemed to love cheesy Italian dishes. Schein noted that rats may have a preference for sweets and an aversion to spicy foods, and I would only add that, while I am not disagreeing with him on this point, an exterminator who was based in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in East Harlem told me that the rats there have learned to enjoy spicy garbage. This exterminator hypothesized that rats grow to enjoy the ethnic foods of the ethnic group in whose neighborhood they live. Post-Schein rat food studies corroborate this observation to some extent; this rat adaption is more technically described as a "local food dialect."

Likewise, while apples are listed here as unfavoured by rats, I once watched a rat work hard to keep an apple. One night, just inside the fence surrounding City Hall, I spotted a rat who had found an apple core; the rat was standing in the tall green gra.s.s of the park outside the building. I approached carefully, but somehow the rat noticed me, and it immediately began running north along the concrete base of the fence. Then, seeming to sense that I was following him-jogging alongside him, actually-the rat jumped off the concrete and back into the gra.s.s, looking almost pastoral as it galloped through the tall, summer-breeze-swept green. About twenty-five yards later, he jumped to the sidewalk and ran along a concrete barrier used to block access to a construction project, then down into a sewer. The apple would not fit through the grate on the sewer. The rat pushed, trying to make it fit. Then, as I approached, the rat, startled, jumped into the sewer and reached up to pull at the apple, again to no avail. Fortunately, I had my night-vision monocular in my backpack; I took it out and was able to get close enough to the sewer to look into it and see the rat looking at the apple. As I crouched down and gazed into the sewer, an Israeli couple who were tourists and didn't speak much English wanted to know where I got what they thought was a video camera but was actually the night-vision monocular. I tried to explain to them that I was just watching a rat in the sewer. At the time, I was with my friend Matt, the poet, and he and I pointed to the rat-if you knew what you were looking for, you could see the rat's head somewhat, even without night-vision gear. The couple nodded a lot, but in retrospect I don't think they were understanding me. I am not certain that rat watching translates, anyway.

OH, TO PONDER THE DIGESTIVE systems of the city, to consider the vast and mundane civic processes through which the city rat is nourished and the alley filled-for in the alley I can see the city as organism itself, a creature that consumes in unimaginable quant.i.ty, that excretes, eliminates, expels!

On that late-summer evening, I continued to watch the rats emerge from inside the black plastic garbage bags in my rat alley, and I still could not identify the food that so appealed to them that they continued to carry off from the bag. I moved closer, and at first the rats stopped, seemingly aware of my presence. I stood very still. After a few minutes, when they returned to eating, I walked up the alley again, this time along the wall. I was closer now, maybe twenty feet from where they were carting away the garbage, which was stringy and white, almost gooey. Then the back door to the Irish restaurant opened. The rats scattered and froze. I froze. A man threw out garbage, but did not see me, as far as I could tell. I waited, my heart beating loudly. The door closed. I continued to keep still. In a minute the rats returned, to pull again at the substance. Meanwhile, some young men and women came out of a bar and into the alley, to light cigarettes and talk. The men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, and the women's beach attire seemed to clash with the alley's aesthetic. Again, the rats scattered, though this time they returned before before the bargoers left. Now, the rats had hit a rich vein of the stuff they were eating-they were shuttling it back and forth, unbeknownst to the bargoers. the bargoers left. Now, the rats had hit a rich vein of the stuff they were eating-they were shuttling it back and forth, unbeknownst to the bargoers.

Finally, I realized I could go around the corner and check the restaurant's menu. After so doing, I went back into the alley, where the rats had begun fighting, and they were fighting over this garbage-two rats, screeching, attacking. One rat ran. I could see the other with his paws toward his mouth, eating the white substance, which I now saw clearly was one of the daily specials, chicken potpie.

Chapter 9.

FIGHTS.

THE CITY is a place to which people migrate. It is a place where, as was (and still is) the case with rats, citizens-to-be arrived on ships in huge numbers, such that they swarmed ash.o.r.e, finding homes in hovels and shanties, along dark streets and alleys, taking their place at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, near the settlement's bowels. In the nineteenth century, twenty-five million people came to America through New York. Millions of Germans arrived to escape war, and as New York was becoming America's largest and wealthiest city, the Irish, fleeing their great famine, came looking for work, looking for food. In the 1830s, one thousand people climbed out of the bottom of ships anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e every day, and aside from living in pits, the newly arrived immigrants socialized. For many years, one of the things they did to relax was cram into little saloons, sometimes called sporting men's clubs, and stand around dirt pits and watch rats fight.

The most renowned rat pit was a place down in the seaport called Sportsman's Hall, owned and operated by a sportsman and rat fight impresario named Christopher Keybourn, better known as Kit Burns. Kit Burns was stout and red-faced, portly but muscular. He wore muttonchop whiskers. When he was dressing up, he wore a bright red shirt and suspenders. As more and more immigrants arrived in New York in the mid-nineteenth century, the upper cla.s.ses tended to look at the working cla.s.ses as "b.e.s.t.i.a.l," as Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly put it-with rough hands, rude demeanor, tanned skin, and ragged clothes. People said Kit looked like a rat-fighting dog. put it-with rough hands, rude demeanor, tanned skin, and ragged clothes. People said Kit looked like a rat-fighting dog.

Kit b.u.ms was born in Donegal, Ireland, and he came to New York as. a boy, in a huge wave of Irish immigration-two hundred thousand Irish arrived in New York City around 1830. As a youth, Kit played with the dogs at Yankee Sullivan's Sawdust House, then the most famous dog-fighting parlor in lower Manhattan. Kit opened up Sportsman's Hall in 1840, at 273 Water Street, in a neighborhood described by nonresidents as "a slum of moral putrefaction." Kit's neighbor was a dance hall owned by John Allen, also known as "the wickedest man in New York." As a rat fight impresario, Kit made enough money to bring his parents over from Ireland and then his brother, who became a policeman. Kit made his own alcohol, which he sold in his saloon. He also drank his own alcohol exclusively and considered it a sign of the success of a strict twenty-gla.s.s-a-day drinking regimen that, when he fell down a flight of stairs, he was up and about in a matter of days. He was a.s.sociated with a gang called the Dead Rabbits, a Irish working-cla.s.s gang that defended the neighborhood from anti-immigrant nativist gangs like the Bowery Boys. Among these men, he was sometimes referred to as a "rodentary magnate."

Upon entering Sportsman's Hall, the rat fight patron first pa.s.sed through the saloon, which was decorated with pictures of boxers and lithographs of hunting scenes and of people camping in the woods. Two of Kit's favorite dogs hung stuffed over the bar. Jack was a black and tan that had once killed one hundred rats in six minutes and forty seconds, an American record; Hunky was a dog-fighting champion who had died after his last victory. The bar itself was said to hold 250 decent people and 400 indecent ones. The rat pit was just beyond the bar. It was a wooden-walled oval on the dirt floor, seventeen feet long, eight and a half feet wide, with benches and boxes for the patrons. The rats entered in a wire cage the size of a large pail; they came in fifty at a time, rats screaming and hissing. When the dogs saw the rats released, they howled, setting the rats into a frenzy. "They galloped about the walls in different directions, meeting and crowding into a file in one of the corners, where they tried ineffectually to scale the top of the pit," a rat fight attendee wrote. "Then they would separate again and run frightened about the floor, trying every crevice and corner. One or two ran up the trousers and legs of the cage-holder, whence he composedly and carelessly shook them again." Jocko the Wonder Dog, a London-based rat fighting dog, was said to hold the world's record, having killed one hundred rats in five minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Sometimes, Kit featured ferrets or weasels killing rats, but rat killing without dogs was considered a slower sport, more suited for women and children. On rare occasions, men fought the rats. A New York correspondent covering a Philadelphia rat fight described one such scene: "Then came a horrible spectacle. Quick as lightning the man plunged his hand into the ma.s.s of rats, seized one by the back and carried it to his mouth-with a squeak and a crunch, the lifeless carca.s.s was tossed aside with a broken neck." When men fought rats, the man was expected to bite the rat's head off. This often resulted in the man's face being bloodied from rat bites. Even Kit was disgusted by this-he was said to have thrown a man out of his place for trying it. And yet when Kit died, Kit's daughter married a rat killer, Richard Toner, alias d.i.c.k the Rat.

The rats themselves came from the alleys around the docks. Jack Jennings was the brother of Harry Jennings, another rat pit owner, and Jack used to set out at night with two large canvas bags, a piece of iron wire, a crowbar, a jackknife, a trap that caged the rats alive, a lantern, and a large bottle of what he described as oil of rhodium, which he claimed kept the rats from biting him. A reporter followed him on a fall evening in 1866. Jennings went into alleys downtown and a stable on Front Street, near the Seaport. In the stable he turned on his lanterns and spotted some rats. Then he set his trap, and while he waited, he rubbed oil of rhodium on his hands and arms; he lay down on the ground and, crawling toward the rats, grabbed one after the other, quickly "giving them the sack," as he described it. He sold rats to the rat pits at fifteen cents a rat. The rats that the rat pits did not buy would often be sold to make gloves. Jack Jennings averaged 150 rats a night. Kit Burns used to say that the man who caught rats for him had "a gift," and that his methods were secret. "Lots of folks have tried to find it out," Kit said, "but 't ain't no use. It'll al'us be a secret."

A RAT, AS WE KNOW, lives in a colony, traversing a discrete range, and so did Kit Burns. And in his own neighborhood, among the boatloads of people immigrating to New York, Kit Burns was well-known and well-liked-full of rat fight stories. Outside of downtown, people were not as fond of him, especially Henry Bergh, the founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Physically, Bergh was the opposite of Kit Burns. Here is a description from Scribner's Monthly Magazine: Scribner's Monthly Magazine: "Nature gave him an absolute patent on every feature and manner of his personality. His commanding stature of six feet is magnified by his erect and dignified bearing. A silk hat with straight rim covers with primness the severity of his presence. A dark brown or dark blue frock overcoat encases his broad shouldered and spare, yet sinewy, figure." Bergh lived uptown, on Fifth Avenue, and he had a country house in the Hudson River Valley. He was the son of a shipbuilding magnate who had built warships for the government during the War of 1812. Originally, Bergh had hoped to be a writer. He wrote stories, poems, and plays; a piece called "Human Chattels" satirized the trend of wealthy New York mothers attempting to marry their daughters to European royalty, and "A Decided Scamp" was a comedy that few people thought was funny. In London, the reviews of one of his poems dismayed him. "Look at that!" Bergh said to his publisher. "They have literally skinned me alive." In 1862, he was made secretary of legation at Saint Petersburg, Russia. He wore a uniform, and when he did, he was surprised to see people kowtow to his rank. He began attacking animal cruelty. "At last I've found a way to utilize my gold lace," he said. When he returned to New York, in 1866, he founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Soon, people recognized him in the streets. He was known as "the ubiquitous and humane biped." "That's the man who is kind to the dumb animals," people on the street would say. "Nature gave him an absolute patent on every feature and manner of his personality. His commanding stature of six feet is magnified by his erect and dignified bearing. A silk hat with straight rim covers with primness the severity of his presence. A dark brown or dark blue frock overcoat encases his broad shouldered and spare, yet sinewy, figure." Bergh lived uptown, on Fifth Avenue, and he had a country house in the Hudson River Valley. He was the son of a shipbuilding magnate who had built warships for the government during the War of 1812. Originally, Bergh had hoped to be a writer. He wrote stories, poems, and plays; a piece called "Human Chattels" satirized the trend of wealthy New York mothers attempting to marry their daughters to European royalty, and "A Decided Scamp" was a comedy that few people thought was funny. In London, the reviews of one of his poems dismayed him. "Look at that!" Bergh said to his publisher. "They have literally skinned me alive." In 1862, he was made secretary of legation at Saint Petersburg, Russia. He wore a uniform, and when he did, he was surprised to see people kowtow to his rank. He began attacking animal cruelty. "At last I've found a way to utilize my gold lace," he said. When he returned to New York, in 1866, he founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Soon, people recognized him in the streets. He was known as "the ubiquitous and humane biped." "That's the man who is kind to the dumb animals," people on the street would say.

Bergh prowled the city for mistreated animals. "On the crowded streets, he walks with a slow, slightly swinging pace peculiar to himself," Scribnefs Scribnefs wrote. "Apparently preoccupied, he is yet observant of everything about him and mechanically notes the condition from head to hoof of every pa.s.sing horse." Bergh stopped carriage drivers to inspect the horses. If he deemed a horse lame, then it would be sent off in a horse ambulance, a contraption that Bergh had developed. (He also invented animal drinking fountains.) If a horse was suffering, then Bergh would have it put down: today, officers of the ASPCA drive around the city in what look like police cars, and they still carry guns, a remnant of the time when they might shoot a horse in the streets if it was suffering. If Bergh felt a cow's udder was too full of milk while a cow was walking to market, he would then force the farmers to milk their cows on the spot. He often gave impromptu speeches in the street, and if horse drivers or anyone else complained about treating an animal humanely, then Bergh would raise his walking stick or throw the men to the ground. Bergh convinced upper-cla.s.s marksmen to shoot gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s instead of live pigeons and exposed the cruel and unsanitary conditions in which milk cows were kept in bas.e.m.e.nts beneath breweries and fed distillery garbage-the swill milk crime, as it was known. During the 1860s, Bergh turned his attention to dog fighting, which Kit Burns also dabbled in, and then to rat fighting, the area of entertainment in which Kit Burns reigned supreme. Bergh's campaign was effective, and by 1867 the wrote. "Apparently preoccupied, he is yet observant of everything about him and mechanically notes the condition from head to hoof of every pa.s.sing horse." Bergh stopped carriage drivers to inspect the horses. If he deemed a horse lame, then it would be sent off in a horse ambulance, a contraption that Bergh had developed. (He also invented animal drinking fountains.) If a horse was suffering, then Bergh would have it put down: today, officers of the ASPCA drive around the city in what look like police cars, and they still carry guns, a remnant of the time when they might shoot a horse in the streets if it was suffering. If Bergh felt a cow's udder was too full of milk while a cow was walking to market, he would then force the farmers to milk their cows on the spot. He often gave impromptu speeches in the street, and if horse drivers or anyone else complained about treating an animal humanely, then Bergh would raise his walking stick or throw the men to the ground. Bergh convinced upper-cla.s.s marksmen to shoot gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s instead of live pigeons and exposed the cruel and unsanitary conditions in which milk cows were kept in bas.e.m.e.nts beneath breweries and fed distillery garbage-the swill milk crime, as it was known. During the 1860s, Bergh turned his attention to dog fighting, which Kit Burns also dabbled in, and then to rat fighting, the area of entertainment in which Kit Burns reigned supreme. Bergh's campaign was effective, and by 1867 the Evening Telegram Evening Telegram wrote that ratting has been "put down" by that "irrepressible suppressor of cruelty to animals, Mr. Bergh, and now it no longer delights the a.s.sembled throngs of Battery Roughs and Bowery Boys." In a letter to an a.s.sociate, Bergh wrote, "[0]ne of our chief achievements is, wrote that ratting has been "put down" by that "irrepressible suppressor of cruelty to animals, Mr. Bergh, and now it no longer delights the a.s.sembled throngs of Battery Roughs and Bowery Boys." In a letter to an a.s.sociate, Bergh wrote, "[0]ne of our chief achievements is, the breaking up of all the leading Pits." the breaking up of all the leading Pits."

The only pit still operating was Kit Burns's Sportsman's Hall.

KIT WAS USED TO RAIDS; he was wary of traps, of anyone new in his club. He'd engineered the exit in the back of his bar like an escape tunnel, a narrow corridor designed so that the police could be blocked by one or two men while the sporting men escaped out the back. But now Bergh was onto him. A policeman came down through the skylight one night, an overhead raid; he caught Kit's patrons in the middle of a rat fight. The men were all brought into court, where the judge complained about the smell of the men from Kit's neighborhood. Eventually they were released. But the raids continued. Finally, Kit was hauled into jail. In court, Kit hired a well-known defense attorney, William F. Howe of Hummel and Howe, who argued, first, that the men did not set the dogs against each other; and later, that the men were only rat fighting. Howe conjectured that if rat fighting was made illegal, then before long oysters would be banned, oysters being the most popular food in New York, until a little while after 1878, the year pollution closed the last oyster beds. Also, Howe made a big show of the pain that an oyster would feel when the oyster was chucked with a knife between its sh.e.l.ls; he argued that if the people discontinued ratting, then a man might one day be arrested for consuming oysters.

The judge added, "Only if he chews!"

At this remark, the portion of the courtroom filled with Kit Burns's neighbors broke into hysterics; the portion filled with members of Bergh's entourage later complained to the judge that this remark was not funny.

Kit's own defense of rat fighting was based on his view of the rat as a nonanimal, or non-anything even. "Mr. Bergh calls a rat an animal!" Kit said. "Now, everybody of any sense knows that a rat is a vermin. vermin. Bergh takes up for the rat and won't let us kill rats because he thinks they're animals. Wouldn't he kill a rat if he found one in his cupboard? Of course he would. But, would he kill a horse if he found one in his yard, or even in his parlor? Of course he Bergh takes up for the rat and won't let us kill rats because he thinks they're animals. Wouldn't he kill a rat if he found one in his cupboard? Of course he would. But, would he kill a horse if he found one in his yard, or even in his parlor? Of course he wouldn't. wouldn't. Why? Because a horse is Why? Because a horse is an animal, an animal, but a rat ain't. I but a rat ain't. I know rats. know rats. I know they're vermin, and they I know they're vermin, and they ought ought to be killed. And if we can get a little sport out of their killing, so much the better." to be killed. And if we can get a little sport out of their killing, so much the better."

Henry Bergh continued to hunt down Kit Burns, leading raid after raid on Sportsman's Hall. Meanwhile, all around the Water Street rat pit, religious reformers were taking over the saloons and dance halls for prayer meetings. John Allen, who was known as the Wickedest Man in New York, rented his dance hall out for prayer meetings, and Kit had many offers to do the same, all of which he initially declined. Then he wrote an open letter to Henry Bergh in the Herald, Herald, inviting him to come and speak on rat killing at Sportsman's Hall: inviting him to come and speak on rat killing at Sportsman's Hall:

Since Johnny Allen closed his crib I've been thinking of myself and my business. I own and train lots of dogs and I kill any number of rats in the pit. A good many first rate fellows, a little rough in speech, may be, but trumps at heart, call in to see the dogs kill the rats, and I've some that are just a little touch above anything in town in that line. You see I trained them pups myself. But what I was going to say is this:-I like everybody to have a fair chance, and I believe Mr. Bergh's on the square from the word go! Now, if that gentleman will just call on me any day, I'll fix it so he can talk to the crowd, deliver his lectures to them-and there are sometimes two or three hundred present-and if he can show us that we are cruel and are doing wrong, why all I've got to say is, I'll burst the pit and give away or sell out my dogs; and I've some of the finest ratters out. I feel kind of dubious about this thing; and yet I can hardly make myself believe it's wrong or cruel to kill rats, however it may be about fighting dogs. But I'd like to talk to Mr. Bergh about these things, and I'm sincere, if he'll only call on me, at my place, No. 273 Water Street. Respectfully, Respectfully,Kit Burns Bergh did not respond to Kit Burns's letter.

Seeing that his neighborhood was going uphill, Kit decided to try renting his place to the religious leaders. Soon, a prayer service was held in his saloon every day for an hour beginning at noon.

"Do you intend to give up your business, Mr. Burns?" a prayer leader asked him, as he waited anxiously near the bar, which-during the prayer services, anyway-was not serving Kit's homemade alcohol.

"Not much," Kit said. "Not if I know myself. No, gentlemen, the games of the house will go on the same as ever. As soon as those 'fellers' leave, we're going to have a rat-killin'-a bully time-and all the fun you want."

The leaders of the prayer service attempted to tell him that the money would eat at his conscience. "Oh, they can't come that over me. I'm too old for that," Kit said.

In December of 1869, Kit's favorite dog, Belcher, died in a fight with a dog from Brooklyn. Kit said that in retrospect he'd thought the dog had been a little off since the prayer meetings. "He was never exactly himself after it," Kit said. "It wasn't so much the praying as the singing that took hold of him." The fight in which Belcher died was to be the last dog fight in Sportsman's Hall. Kit subsequently rented the entire building out for three years. It became a mission and home for wayward women, called The Kit Burns Mission. For a short time, Kit opened a smaller saloon down the street, called The Band-Box.

At last, Henry Bergh got wind of what would be Kit Burns's last rat fight, on November 21, 1870.

THREE HUNDRED RATS WILL BE GIVEN AWAY, FREE OF CHARGE,.

FOR GENTLEMEN TO TRY THEIR DOGS WITH.

COME ONE, COME ALL!.

THERE WILL BE A GOOD NIGHTS SPORT AND NO HUMBUG.

TICKETS 25 CENTS.

By eight o'clock four or five dozen dead rats were in a pile and one dog was still going. Bergh, who had been informed of the fight, snuck in and, by some accounts, carried a lantern under his coat. When the police raided, the sportsmen shouted, ''Douse the glim!" ''Douse the glim!" Bergh was ready with a lantern, foiling their escape. Their claim that they were merely preparing for a boxing match wasn't convincing enough to prevent thirty-nine men from being arrested. The dogs were taken away, the ones that were fighting destroyed. The surviving rats were thrown in their cage in the East River. Bergh was ready with a lantern, foiling their escape. Their claim that they were merely preparing for a boxing match wasn't convincing enough to prevent thirty-nine men from being arrested. The dogs were taken away, the ones that were fighting destroyed. The surviving rats were thrown in their cage in the East River. The Herald The Herald said that Bergh had finally got Kit and his men: "He will make them squall worse than the unfortunate rats which were dumped into the East River by the police." Kit was upbeat upon arrest, but reportedly depressed soon after. He was sued for the value of dogs that the police had destroyed. His family moved to Brooklyn, and Mrs. Burns, in the said that Bergh had finally got Kit and his men: "He will make them squall worse than the unfortunate rats which were dumped into the East River by the police." Kit was upbeat upon arrest, but reportedly depressed soon after. He was sued for the value of dogs that the police had destroyed. His family moved to Brooklyn, and Mrs. Burns, in the Sun, Sun, invited Henry Bergh to visit her there "provided," as she said, "the gentleman will have the kindness to bring his coffin with him." Though he had survived a knife in his neck at Kerrigan's saloon a few years before, Kit caught a cold and died, before trial. invited Henry Bergh to visit her there "provided," as she said, "the gentleman will have the kindness to bring his coffin with him." Though he had survived a knife in his neck at Kerrigan's saloon a few years before, Kit caught a cold and died, before trial.

The sporting men were all acquitted. A man testified that it was not a dog fight but a rat fight, which was still considered less reprehensible. "The blood they tell about were rat blood, that's wot sort of blood it were," the sporting man said. And the judge suggested that if they stopped dogs from killing rats, they would next have to make it illegal for cats to kill mice. There was a funeral for Kit a few days before the trial. A parade followed his body from his home in Brooklyn, all the way to Calvary Cemetery in Queens. "The excitement in the neighborhood was most intense, and crowds gathered around the house for some time previous to the hour set for the funeral," the Herald Herald wrote. "The crowds poured into the place and gazed in the face of the dead with as much apparent reverence as if the deceased were a high-toned, honorable, moral and religious light in the community." wrote. "The crowds poured into the place and gazed in the face of the dead with as much apparent reverence as if the deceased were a high-toned, honorable, moral and religious light in the community."

A few tributes to Kit Burns were published in the papers, such as this one, which is itself a tribute to a rodentary man: "Departed from this life yesterday . . . one whose birth was humble, and who did not aspire to congress, a member of no religious denomination; a life-long enemy of the police magistrates; a Fellow of the Metropolitan Society of the Slums; a professor of the art of dodging the penitentiary; an enthusiastic believer in 'Rings'; the subject of much pious objurgation, and the hero of many a newspaper sensation; the beloved of our 'ruling cla.s.ses,' and the pet of the 'Water Street Warblers'; a genius in disguise; a Democrat by birth, and a 'Dead Rabbit' by a.s.sociation was the dear departed, which is his name, as it shall be forever written on the hearts of New Yorkers, is Kit Burns."

Most newspapers wrote that they were happy that Kit Burns had died. "We are glad of it," wrote the Citizens and Round Table. Citizens and Round Table. Henry Bergh was among those well pleased. "I drove him out of New York and into his grave," Bergh said, a few years later. Henry Bergh was among those well pleased. "I drove him out of New York and into his grave," Bergh said, a few years later.

In addition to preventing an incalculable number of animal tortures, Henry Bergh went on to found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Thankfully, he did eventually stop rat fights and the like, though such events persisted for some time-people naturally want to gather in crowds and eat and drink and cheer and sometimes get into brawls. Some historians argue that the end of rat fights did not come until the next inexpensive crowd-pleasing sporting event was finally embraced by the growing number of inner-city residents in New York and all over America: baseball.

Chapter 10.

GARBAGE.

A LATE-SUMMER EVENING, almost fall. A delicious evening that was cool but not cold, an evening of haze-blurred stars beneath which, as I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, the East River fought the rising tide to rush into the harbor, the bay, the ocean. And then I was down from the bird's-eye view of the bridge and into the twinkling buildings, then the side streets, then the alley, which is not really light and not really dark but locked in its semi-sickly fluorescence, in the side-street twilight that is its Arctic White Night. The rats were out, grazing peacefully in the two garbage berms, in the Chinese and the Irish trash. So many rats, at least a dozen visible now, some large, some small. Rat life in the alley can be a harried blur, a wash of rodentary citizenry, or it can be a kaleidoscope of the recognizable, a rat-a-tat-tat of what almost immediately becomes a harmonized familiar-and so I consider these questions: Are there more? Is this colony growing? Or am I just noticing rats that I did not notice before? LATE-SUMMER EVENING, almost fall. A delicious evening that was cool but not cold, an evening of haze-blurred stars beneath which, as I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, the East River fought the rising tide to rush into the harbor, the bay, the ocean. And then I was down from the bird's-eye view of the bridge and into the twinkling buildings, then the side streets, then the alley, which is not really light and not really dark but locked in its semi-sickly fluorescence, in the side-street twilight that is its Arctic White Night. The rats were out, grazing peacefully in the two garbage berms, in the Chinese and the Irish trash. So many rats, at least a dozen visible now, some large, some small. Rat life in the alley can be a harried blur, a wash of rodentary citizenry, or it can be a kaleidoscope of the recognizable, a rat-a-tat-tat of what almost immediately becomes a harmonized familiar-and so I consider these questions: Are there more? Is this colony