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City's Official Page About Rats Is the Stuff of Nightmares

By DNAinfo Staff on April 27, 2015 6:05am  | Updated on April 12, 2016 11:38am

CHICAGO — Rats are more scared of you than you are of them, right?

Not if you've read the City of Chicago's official page "Rats in Chicago."

The page looks much like other city pages, where you can view popular nonfiction titles at the library or pay a parking ticket.

The facts are presented without ceremony, as though they are easy to digest and then live with for the rest of your life.

Norway rats — the street species — are pests, sure, we all knew that. But the things you learn here cannot be unlearned. Turn back now if you wish to sleep peacefully tonight.

We warned you.

Let's start with diet. With these signs, it's common knowledge for Chicagoans that rats eat dog feces. Gross! It couldn't possibly get worse!

(Flickr/Mark Hogan)

What does the city's page have to tell us?

I'm giving birth, honey! TO A HAMBURGER! A delicous hamburger rat child. Do not appear weak in front of rats.

So where do they live when not scurrying about alleyways?

Were these facts accidentally culled from a B-horror-movie script? Tread water for three days? Land unharmed from a five story fall? If marooned in a shipwreck, the rats will survive longer than you. If you fall from a five-story building, you will be seriously injured, or, perhaps, dead. The rat will walk away unharmed.

Remember not to look weak.

At least rat populations are relatively easy to quell, right?

If she doesn't eat any of them, a female rat could produce 84 rats in a year. But at least the 4-foot-diameter rat king this could produce probably doesn't want to bother anyone, right?

Do not find yourself in a situation with both corners and rats. In fight-or-flight mode, always run. Run the heck away.


She cannot fight them anymore. They are more powerful. They can tread water for three days. They can land unharmed from a five-story fall. She accepts her fate. (Flickr/Tatiana Bulyonkova)

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