Rats : Observations On The History And Habitat Of The City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants Part 5

Chapter 15.

WINTER.

I DID NOT GET to my rat alley for a long time that fall; streets were blocked off all over downtown. A sense of dread hung over the city for a long time, though eventually it lifted, not coincidentally, I would argue, with the ability of the populace to walk through the streets again, to go to work and buy lunch, pick up a newspaper or have a drink. Naturally, I was interested in seeing my alley again, and after my own city life regained some routine, I even began thinking, given my own strange area of expertise, of rats. Fear was what the city was facing-with threats, real or perceived, on its buildings, its bridges, its infrastructure, with concerns for family and safety and Hfe-and rats are like fear: they creep in at night, in those unseen places of vulnerability. There was a time in New York, in the 1920s, when scientists proposed a great wall along the waterfront to shut out rats completely, to seal out rats and, thus, forever end rat fear. Eventually, though, the idea was deemed implausible and abandoned: rats will always get through. In those days when I was unable to get back to my rat alley because of blockades, it dawned on me that rats would get through to the streets that were cut off from people and maybe thrive. It dawned on me that there might be a lot of rats, actually. DID NOT GET to my rat alley for a long time that fall; streets were blocked off all over downtown. A sense of dread hung over the city for a long time, though eventually it lifted, not coincidentally, I would argue, with the ability of the populace to walk through the streets again, to go to work and buy lunch, pick up a newspaper or have a drink. Naturally, I was interested in seeing my alley again, and after my own city life regained some routine, I even began thinking, given my own strange area of expertise, of rats. Fear was what the city was facing-with threats, real or perceived, on its buildings, its bridges, its infrastructure, with concerns for family and safety and Hfe-and rats are like fear: they creep in at night, in those unseen places of vulnerability. There was a time in New York, in the 1920s, when scientists proposed a great wall along the waterfront to shut out rats completely, to seal out rats and, thus, forever end rat fear. Eventually, though, the idea was deemed implausible and abandoned: rats will always get through. In those days when I was unable to get back to my rat alley because of blockades, it dawned on me that rats would get through to the streets that were cut off from people and maybe thrive. It dawned on me that there might be a lot of rats, actually.

Of course, I didn't mention this to people. n.o.body really wanted to hear about rats, and who can blame them? The newspapers and television news programs weren't concerned with rats, to be sure. Rats were even censored to some extent. A movie ent.i.tled The Rats, The Rats, originally scheduled to premiere on television the week after the disaster, was canceled; it was about New York City being overrun by rats, packs of them attacking residents. originally scheduled to premiere on television the week after the disaster, was canceled; it was about New York City being overrun by rats, packs of them attacking residents.* As it happened, I was actually glad to hear that pest control officials everywhere were thinking about rats-it made me feel more sane. Eventually, I began hearing from exterminators that I know, and like small-business owners all over the city, some were adversely affected. George Ladd of Bonzai de Bug had a large construction job that he'd been counting on canceled after the disaster. On the other hand, Barry Beck was getting more work. When I talked to him, he was on his cell phone a few blocks from the site of the building and said he thought the rat population was increasing dramatically downtown: "They've proliferated. They've compounded, multiplied, and intensified," Barry said. As it happened, I was actually glad to hear that pest control officials everywhere were thinking about rats-it made me feel more sane. Eventually, I began hearing from exterminators that I know, and like small-business owners all over the city, some were adversely affected. George Ladd of Bonzai de Bug had a large construction job that he'd been counting on canceled after the disaster. On the other hand, Barry Beck was getting more work. When I talked to him, he was on his cell phone a few blocks from the site of the building and said he thought the rat population was increasing dramatically downtown: "They've proliferated. They've compounded, multiplied, and intensified," Barry said.

Late that fall and into the winter, Barry was working overtime all around the World Trade Center, at the small businesses and restaurants that surrounded it. He said he was forced to keep a full-time rodent control crew at the office of one large business located near the World Trade Center site. I found a strange comfort in hearing that Barry Beck was still on the job. Newspapers reported on whether large multinational conglomerates and financial banking firms would stay or go, but for my own part I felt it said something good about the city that Barry Beck was sticking around to fight rats.

There was some controversy over precisely where the rats were. Some people thought the rats were going into what remained of the old World Trade Center site itself. Barry disagreed. "My personal feeling is that they've left the World Trade Center area and went into the surrounding buildings," Barry said to me at some point. "That's my personal feeling. I think they went into the restaurants and things."

When I did finally go out at night again, I put off going to Edens Alley; I looked for rats elsewhere first. As I walked, I noticed right away that someone had put rat poison all around; there were bait stations filled with rat poison everywhere. I saw a number of them on Thames Street, for instance, a short, alley like street that runs off lower Broadway and connects to the World Trade Center site. Rats were streaking up and down Thames Street, stopping in the bait stations momentarily to feed on poison. (Thames Street was where trucks unloaded food donated to the World Trade Center rescue workers by people around the country-lobsters came from Maine, for example, and Cajun food from New Orleans, the sc.r.a.ps of which no doubt helped feed the rats.) And then when I checked in on Theatre Alley-my second favorite rat alley, the alley that was the site of the famous rat attack and is hidden right across from City Hall-it was as if I was checking in on an old friend. How happy I was to see that the row of old buildings in front of it, as dust- and ash-covered as they were, had survived! The alley itself felt protected, safe, secretly secure from the apocalyptic event two blocks away. Inside the alley itself, where I had once seen scores of rats, now there were only bait stations, lined up and down the walls. I checked the poison identification labels and discovered they had been laid out by the city's rodent control department. Then, as I continued to look around, in the streets immediately surrounding the World Trade Center and even as I looked over the remaining police barricades, I saw bait stations in other alleys and even lining whole streets. It was a tremendous show of antirodent strength.

I GOT IN TOUCH WITH some people I know at the health department's rodent control office. I talked to Dan Markowski. Markowski is a tall, ponytailed Southerner, who works in the section of the health department called vector control. A vector is anything that carries a virus or a disease. Rats are excellent vectors: rats are vectors of plague, as well as diseases such as typhus, salmonella, rabies, hantavirus, and leptospirosis, which is sometimes called yellow jaundice or Well's disease and is spread by the rats' infected urine, usually in water. (A few years ago, a dog in Brooklyn's Prospect Park died of the disease after he ate a rat he caught in a big puddle.) Many insects are vectors, and New York's health department monitors the population of New York ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and mosquitoes, which can carry typhus and malaria and West Nile virus. Roaches are also suspected of being a source for asthma, as are rodents.

Dan Markowski had studied ticks in Rhode Island, where he went to graduate school. After graduation, he worked with mosquitoes in New Jersey, on the Jersey sh.o.r.e. When he came to New York, in 2001, he was mainly responsible for mosquito work; he spends a good deal of time testing mosquitoes and considering spraying insecticides from helicopters. But he was also interested in a project that involved live rat trapping, something New York's rodent control office had abandoned decades before but was considering starting up again. "It's pretty exciting," he said.

Before trapping could begin, some basic, if extensive, sanitation work had to be done downtown. After September 11, Markowski inspected downtown restaurants that had been closed due to the quarantine and left unattended for many days. The condition of the restaurants was especially bad in the blocks surrounding the World Trade Center. At one restaurant, on Murray Street, Markowski and his colleagues had to put on protective suits and breathing apparatus to go in. The restaurant had had a long self-serve buffet station out on the morning of September 11 when everyone had evacuated. The buffet station had been left alone for weeks. A fireman who had been working in the WTC noticed Markowski and the other health department officers as they went into the restaurant. "I don't want your job," he shouted over to them.

The stench that hit them as they entered the restaurant was disgusting. "It was just this overwhelming, horrible odor that was just as bad as anything you could ever imagine," Markowski remembered.

They moved farther in. One of Dan's colleagues turned to him. She was also wearing a suit. "Dan," she said, "I've got to get out of here. I'm going to throw up."

Next, Dan thought he was going to throw up too, but he didn't.

When they made it to the buffet counter, they saw that all the items offered had putrefied. "There was just this slurry or sludge of rancid stuff," Dan said.

When some of the bags broke as they dragged them out of the restaurant, the emergency officials outside the restaurant scattered. Sanitation workers carted them away.

IT WAS DURING THESE PUTRID food removal forays that the health department began to think about rats. A fireman who noticed their health department jackets pointed to the partially destroyed building at 5 World Trade Center. "You guys better get in there," the fireman said. Dan and his boss, James Gibson, the director of the vector control department, realized that rats might become a big problem.

They began inspections. Strangely, there were not a lot of signs of rats on the streets nearby. Health officials suggested that the rats may have been finding food underground, in the bas.e.m.e.nts of the buildings, in the underground restaurants. "You had all of these restaurants with all of this food, so there was the food source right there," Dan said. He paused as he continued, uncomfortable with what he was about to say, because another possible food source was the bodies of the people killed in the collapse of the towers-as public health officials, they had to think about such things. "And then you had a lot of deceased individuals," Dan said. "The thing is, that could be a food source."

When Dan said this, he paused and spent a few seconds trying to look like a professional health official.

Among the people who volunteered to help at the World Trade Center were the employees of Terminix, one of the largest pest control firms in the country. They were certainly not as celebrated as other kinds of workers who volunteered at Ground Zero, but they were just as happy to help. (LiphaTech, the company I visited in Wisconsin, donated bait stations.) "We had more employees volunteer than we had places to use them," said Mike Baessler, a Terminix executive. Baessler flew into the city from Memphis.

"We didn't do rodent-proofing," Baessler said. "Around Ground Zero that was impossible."

They put out a thousand bait stations, just in the World Trade Center, an enormous amount. They put 115 steel-wire bait holders in the area's sewers. They worked long s.h.i.+fts, from dawn to midnight, trying to stop rats.

"We thought, let's create this perimeter around Ground Zero," Baessler said.

Finally, with the Terminix volunteers, the health department arranged to be escorted into the bas.e.m.e.nts of the World Trade Center, the underground rooms of the area-that is, the ones that had survived. Again, they did not see live rats. They did, however, see a lot of evidence that rats had been there. The rats appeared to be avoiding the rancid food, as they had predicted, though they were obviously eating what they could-most of a cookie store, for instance. But in the tunnels, in the inch-thick dust, in the lights of their flashlights, the rat fighters couldn't believe what they were seeing: there were thousands and thousands of rat tracks.

"The dust was just totally run through with rodents," Baessler said.

"The rodent population may have been tremendous," Dan recalled.

If they ever worried that they had put out too much poison, they remembered those tracks.

They circled the old building site with bait stations; they placed rodenticide all up and down the nearby streets. People in TriBeCa and in Battery Park complained of the rats in the streets that winter, and there were were rats-I saw them. But there would have been an awful lot more rats if it hadn't been for the health department. Months later, James Gibson testified to the city council that they had successfully contained a potential rat explosion-a statement that was difficult to prove, or even believe if you didn't fully understand the downtown rat situation. rats-I saw them. But there would have been an awful lot more rats if it hadn't been for the health department. Months later, James Gibson testified to the city council that they had successfully contained a potential rat explosion-a statement that was difficult to prove, or even believe if you didn't fully understand the downtown rat situation.

Dan Markowski summed up the exterminators' dilemma this way: "If we're out there doing our job, there are no rats. But it's notoriously hard to confirm our job. The only way to prove it is to stop." I think of them as being like spies, or undercover police, the people charged with securing the invisible perimeters who work in the areas where no one else goes. When they are doing what they are supposed to be doing, you don't always know. You only hear about them when something goes wrong.

AFTER so MANY WEEKS AWAY, I finally got a chance to spend some time back in my alley. It was the beginning of the winter, and it was a cold, rainy night. I came across the Brooklyn Bridge and looked down on the nighttime water, the dark waves; at the crest of the bridge, I could see the lights at the sites of the destroyed towers, glowing all throughout downtown like a steady fire. I pa.s.sed City Hall and City Hall Park and heard the starlings that always sit in the London plane trees; they chattered busily as if nothing had happened. I walked toward Theatre Alley, the buildings completely protecting it still all covered with soot and ash. Aside from being filled with rat poison in the health department's secret rat offensive, the alley had been sanitized: the vacant lot had been covered over, the rubble-filled rat hole sealed, and the trash in the alley had been cleared out. The rat's natural habitat had been destroyed. I stood there for a minute wondering what could have happened to Derrick, the guy who called himself Rat Man, who had nearly had all the rats trained. There was a lot of talk about the difficulties faced by people who lived downtown after the World Trade Center was destroyed, but I never heard mention of the fate of the people who lived in the street downtown. Later, my friend Matt saw him recycling cans in Greenwich Village.

It was still raining by the time I got to Edens Alley, and I was feeling down about everything. I didn't have much hope for the rats. I also had mixed feelings about having any hope for rats.

I took the long way and walked past the Fulton Fish Market. The market was closed up-but all of a sudden I though I heard a flute. It was coming from inside the market. I followed the sound, peering in each of the fishmongers' stalls. The floors were clean; the place had been hosed down. But the place smelled like fish. I saw a man sitting alone on a forklift playing the flute-a piper. He saw me and stopped. "Keep playing," I shouted.

"It really carries," he said. He started up again.

I listened for a while and then went around the corner to my alley. I was afraid to look in, and when I did, I didn't see anything. Dejected, I looked in again, and then I saw the gray streak, the blur. It was a rat, followed by rats. I didn't see any poison. The rats in my alley were still there. And, as I would learn, they were pretty much forgotten.

* Instead of showing The Rats, The Rats, the television network showed an old movie, the television network showed an old movie, The Nutty Professor. The Nutty Professor. One of the few places that did mention rats was the One of the few places that did mention rats was the New York Post, New York Post, though, in my opinion, it tended to over mention them; like something out of Defoe, it equated rats at every opportunity with foreigners and to American citizens who consorted with foreigners-the paper used rats, in other words, to sell rage and xenophobia, which in turn sold papers. Some examples of the numerous though, in my opinion, it tended to over mention them; like something out of Defoe, it equated rats at every opportunity with foreigners and to American citizens who consorted with foreigners-the paper used rats, in other words, to sell rage and xenophobia, which in turn sold papers. Some examples of the numerous Post Post headlines using the word headlines using the word rat rat are THE RAT'S BACK, RATS HELP TRAP OTHER RATS, MESSAGE FROM THE RAT HOLE, RATS JUMP FROM SINKING s.h.i.+P, OUR SPIES CLOSE IN ON EVIL RAT HOLES, and RATS GALORE. A political cartoon featured a giant rat that was labeled "terrorism" and about to eat a giant piece of cheese on an American flag that doubled as a giant rat trap. After an American was captured in Afghanistan when American military forces invaded in retaliation for the destruction of the World Trade Center, the front page of the are THE RAT'S BACK, RATS HELP TRAP OTHER RATS, MESSAGE FROM THE RAT HOLE, RATS JUMP FROM SINKING s.h.i.+P, OUR SPIES CLOSE IN ON EVIL RAT HOLES, and RATS GALORE. A political cartoon featured a giant rat that was labeled "terrorism" and about to eat a giant piece of cheese on an American flag that doubled as a giant rat trap. After an American was captured in Afghanistan when American military forces invaded in retaliation for the destruction of the World Trade Center, the front page of the Post Post was like an overgrown rat haiku. It read: was like an overgrown rat haiku. It read: LOOKS LIKE A RAT.

TALKS LIKE A RAT.

SMELLS LIKE A RAT.

HIDES LIKE A RAT.

IT IS A RAT.

When I went to the New York Public Library to look at this issue of the Post Post for a second time, the librarian who handed it to me said it was repeatedly requested. When we finished speaking, a German tourist politely inquired as to whether the library's archival copy was for sale. for a second time, the librarian who handed it to me said it was repeatedly requested. When we finished speaking, a German tourist politely inquired as to whether the library's archival copy was for sale.

Chapter 16.

PLAGUE IN AMERICA.

FEAR, WHICH THE RAT, more than most creatures, so impressively inspires, is a wild thing, and it can turn a man into an animal, direct him toward his basest impulses, his lowest nature. I mention this because as New York was considering its situation-repairing itself, rebuilding, reorganizing some of its civic functions and rehabilitating itself on the whole-I was still thinking about rats and plague. Plague came to America at a time when it could have been prevented from spreading but wasn't, because of fear. The very first plague case in the continental United States appeared on March 6, 1900, in San Francisco's Chinatown-by the Chinese calendar, 1900 was the year of the rat-and it was the same plague that had killed senators in ancient Rome, that had killed kings in medieval Europe. This time, though, scientists not only understood that it was transmitted via rats but had even discovered methods to combat the spread of the disease. Fear kept them from utilizing that knowledge-fear on the part of the city's business interests, fear that in turn inspired fear in the poorest parts of the city, which were most susceptible to disease and its ramifications.

The plague that arrived in San Francisco was part of the third plague pandemic that had broken out in China in 1850. Alexandre Yersin, a French microbiologist, identified the plague bacillus that was eventually named for him, Yersinia pestis, Yersinia pestis, in 1894. Yersin worked with Louis Pasteur at Pasteur's inst.i.tute in Paris. Yersin had met Pasteur after Yersin had cut his finger while operating on a man who had been bitten by a wild dog; his finger still bleeding, Yersin ran immediately to Pasteur's laboratory, where he was vaccinated with Pasteur's new rabies vaccine. When a plague epidemic erupted in Hong Kong, Pasteur sent Yersin to investigate. Yersin wanted to draw fluid from the enlarged nodes of the plague victims, but he was not allowed access to the morgue. On the advice of an English priest, Yersin bribed two English sailors working at the morgue for access. He drew fluid, looked at the microbes under a microscope, and in his journal wrote of the discovery that had eluded scientists for centuries: "This is without question the microbe of the plague." in 1894. Yersin worked with Louis Pasteur at Pasteur's inst.i.tute in Paris. Yersin had met Pasteur after Yersin had cut his finger while operating on a man who had been bitten by a wild dog; his finger still bleeding, Yersin ran immediately to Pasteur's laboratory, where he was vaccinated with Pasteur's new rabies vaccine. When a plague epidemic erupted in Hong Kong, Pasteur sent Yersin to investigate. Yersin wanted to draw fluid from the enlarged nodes of the plague victims, but he was not allowed access to the morgue. On the advice of an English priest, Yersin bribed two English sailors working at the morgue for access. He drew fluid, looked at the microbes under a microscope, and in his journal wrote of the discovery that had eluded scientists for centuries: "This is without question the microbe of the plague."

After Yersin discovered the plague germ, he looked at the world in a whole other way; suddenly, he noticed the dead rats-all around the hospital and Hong Kong. He discovered that these rats were infected with the plague. Investigating further, he discovered that the people in China's mountain villages had long known that the plague outbreaks were preceded by rats dying. At this point, Yersin still did not suspect that fleas transmitted the plague from rats to humans. That link was made by Paul-Louis Simond, another scientist from the Pasteur Inst.i.tute, who went to Vietnam to treat people with an antiplague serum during an outbreak there. He saw further evidence of rats' connection to the disease when he learned that workers at a wool factory had come down with the plague after being forced to clean up dead rats. "We have to a.s.sume," Simond wrote, "that there must be an intermediary between a dead rat and a human." At another plague outbreak, Simond began experimenting with rats in cages in his tent. In ajar, covered with a fine, flea-proof mesh, he hung a healthy rat in small cage just over a rat dying of plague. When the plague rat died, the fleas jumped to the healthy rat, which died a few days later. As a control, Simond placed a flea-free rat dying of plague in ajar with a healthy rat. The healthy rat stayed healthy.

When Chick Gin was found dead in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a San Francisco flophouse, on that Monday morning in March 1900, an a.s.sistant city physician noticed swollen lymph nodes in the decomposed body. Lymph was extracted and taken to a federal quarantine station on Angel Island in San Francisco Harbor, where it was inspected the next morning by Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun. Kinyoun had come to San Francisco after setting up the first infectious-disease laboratory in America, on Staten Island in New York City. He was a physician with the Marine Hospital Service, a predecessor to the U.S. Public Health Service. He was a young hotshot, maybe a little full of himself, though he had some reason to be: he was one of the few men in America to have been to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna to study infectious diseases. He had worked with Pasteur and with Kitasato, a j.a.panese microbiologist who had simultaneously discovered the plague bacillus independent of Yersin. Kinyoun was the right person in the right place at the right time, though he considered it a demotion to be moved to San Francisco, where he lived with his family on Angel Island, which was to him a bay-locked rock.

In San Francisco, on the day after Chick Gin's body was discovered, Kinyoun examined the bacillus and injected it into three animals: a guinea pig, a monkey, and a rat. The microbe looked like plague. Kinyoun reported his concerns to San Francisco's board of health. At first the board cooperated, enacting Kinyoun's call for a quarantine of Chinatown. Kinyoun's success in winning a quarantine did not inspire the Chinese residents of Chinatown, who referred to him as "the wolf doctor." Chinese residents feared for their lives and property. Police were sent in to keep the quarantine. When plague had arrived in Honolulu a few months before, the officials there were so intent on saving the city that they considered burning it down and ended up burning much of Chinatown. (The outbreak of plague in Hawaii is sometimes called the second-worst disaster in the history of the state, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.) Non-Chinese residents of San Francisco were already calling for the destruction of Chinatown, an idea that racist politicians were happy to support; they used fear as an accelerator for their cause, which was hate. The Call Call said, "Clear the foul spot from San Francisco and give the debris to the flames." said, "Clear the foul spot from San Francisco and give the debris to the flames."

The business community was terrified that plague would translate into a boycott of San Francisco goods, that tourists would stay away from San Francisco, that railroad business would suffer. The next day, under pressure from business leaders, the newspapers called the plague discovery a scare. They wrote that it was a plan executed by a corrupt board of health to make money, PLAGUE FAKE IS PART OF PLOT TO PLUNDER, said the San Francisco Call Call The papers accused the board of health of seeking payoffs in order to, as the The papers accused the board of health of seeking payoffs in order to, as the Call Call said, "get snout and forelegs in the public trough." Similar stories were published in the said, "get snout and forelegs in the public trough." Similar stories were published in the Chronicle Chronicle and the and the Bulletin. Bulletin. The only daily paper that acknowledged the real possibility of plague in the city was the The only daily paper that acknowledged the real possibility of plague in the city was the Examiner. Examiner. The The Examiner Examiner was owned by William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst decided there were more newspapers to be sold by playing up a plague scare than playing it down. A building trades journal called was owned by William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst decided there were more newspapers to be sold by playing up a plague scare than playing it down. A building trades journal called Organized Labor Organized Labor also spoke up for an investigation of plague, but it was merely using plague as an excuse to vent more anti-Chinese hostility. "Brothers, wake up!" also spoke up for an investigation of plague, but it was merely using plague as an excuse to vent more anti-Chinese hostility. "Brothers, wake up!" Organized Labor Organized Labor said. "This is a matter of vital importance and should receive thorough consideration in your meetings. The almond-eyed Mongolian is watching for his opportunity, waiting to a.s.sa.s.sinate you." Many reports tried to make plague sound like an innocuous disease, like mumps. A poem in the said. "This is a matter of vital importance and should receive thorough consideration in your meetings. The almond-eyed Mongolian is watching for his opportunity, waiting to a.s.sa.s.sinate you." Many reports tried to make plague sound like an innocuous disease, like mumps. A poem in the Bulletin Bulletin ended like this: ended like this:

And the advertised, boasted bacillusIs a gentle domestic concern,And the doctors who fill us and pill usHave libeled it sadly, we learn Eventually, under pressure from businesses, the government lifted the quarantine.

Then, the guinea pig, the monkey, and the rat died.

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT the rats that were spreading plague did to San Francisco-aside from bringing the plague to America-was to cause one population of the city to see the way another population in the same city was living. Shortly after the guinea pig, monkey, and rat died, Mayor James Phelan reluctantly organized one hundred volunteer physicians to search for plague victims in Chinatown, a twelve-block area where twenty-five thousand Chinese people lived. When the physicians went in, they were explorers in another land. The doctors were shocked at the conditions they discovered. There were mazes of holes and secret tunnels connecting homes. In the underground rooms, holes were cut in sewer pipes in lieu of bathrooms; when the sewer pipes filled up, sewage backed up in the underground rooms, under row after row of bunk beds. And there were rats. The inspectors themselves complained of odors that made them nauseous as they did their work. They could not find any plague victims, however. Chinese residents, concerned that their homes would be burned down, hid their sick relatives and then shuttled them out of the city in small boats at night. Sometimes, when an inspector arrived before a body could be removed, a dead man would be propped up next to a table in an underground room, his hands arranged carefully over dominoes.

The newspapers continued to deny the presence of plague; they emphasized disputes over Kinyoun's diagnoses. People did not want to believe Kinyoun, on the one hand, and on the other, the bacteriological approach to medicine was still new. Kinyoun had worked with the latest in scientific equipment at the Pasteur Inst.i.tute, but in San Francisco doctors considered swollen lymph nodes to be a sign of venereal disease and did not necessarily use microscopes. In fact, most physicians in San Francisco still saw human infection as a result of the inhalation of bad airs-a belief left over from the Middle Ages. The U.S. a.s.sistant secretary of agriculture at the time reported that Asians were particularly susceptible to plague because they ate rice and were deficient in animal proteins.

The Examiner, Examiner, meanwhile, was practically exuberant about the plague, the journalistic equivalent of someone yelling fire in a movie theater. The meanwhile, was practically exuberant about the plague, the journalistic equivalent of someone yelling fire in a movie theater. The Examiner Examiner published panic letters, and an editorial described the "invasion." In New York, the published panic letters, and an editorial described the "invasion." In New York, the journal, journal, also owned by Hearst, published a special edition t.i.tled "Plague Edition," which was delivered to cities throughout the country. The headline was BLACK PLAGUE CREEPS INTO AMERICA. The accompanying, commissioned painting depicted men collecting bodies in the street and people dying from fright. The also owned by Hearst, published a special edition t.i.tled "Plague Edition," which was delivered to cities throughout the country. The headline was BLACK PLAGUE CREEPS INTO AMERICA. The accompanying, commissioned painting depicted men collecting bodies in the street and people dying from fright. The journal journal predicted "plague-stricken men and women, out of their minds with pain, rus.h.i.+ng naked about the streets." Because they did not have details from the plague epidemic yet to be officially declared in San Francisco, the predicted "plague-stricken men and women, out of their minds with pain, rus.h.i.+ng naked about the streets." Because they did not have details from the plague epidemic yet to be officially declared in San Francisco, the journal journal writers cribbed from Daniel Defoe's writers cribbed from Daniel Defoe's journal of the Plague Year. journal of the Plague Year.

The Examiner Examiner only stopped when the other newspapers began attacking it. The only stopped when the other newspapers began attacking it. The Bulletin Bulletin called for the inoculation of the called for the inoculation of the Examiner Examiner with plague bacilli. "It should be removed," the with plague bacilli. "It should be removed," the Bulletin Bulletin wrote, "this city would be healthier, corporeally, morally and politically." Daniel Meyer, a well-known financier, attacked Hearst directly. "It is the nature of the man to tear down," he said in the wrote, "this city would be healthier, corporeally, morally and politically." Daniel Meyer, a well-known financier, attacked Hearst directly. "It is the nature of the man to tear down," he said in the Bulletin. Bulletin. The The Bulletin Bulletin reported that thirty thousand tourists had been driven away from San Francis...o...b.. the plague stories. There were reports of cargoes being sent to other ports. Now, Mayor Phelan worked to deny the existence of the plague; he sent out letters to cities around the country a.s.serting that everything was fine in San Francisco. Newspaper publishers met and agreed not to mention a quarantine on Chinatown. On April 1, the reported that thirty thousand tourists had been driven away from San Francis...o...b.. the plague stories. There were reports of cargoes being sent to other ports. Now, Mayor Phelan worked to deny the existence of the plague; he sent out letters to cities around the country a.s.serting that everything was fine in San Francisco. Newspaper publishers met and agreed not to mention a quarantine on Chinatown. On April 1, the Examiner Examiner stopped publis.h.i.+ng plague news. Meanwhile, more people in Chinatown continued to die from plague. stopped publis.h.i.+ng plague news. Meanwhile, more people in Chinatown continued to die from plague.

Fearing a Black Death-like health crisis, Kinyoun wired Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to say that the city was facing an epidemic. General Walter Wyman, the surgeon general, ordered more health service officers to San Francisco. The surgeon general convinced President William McKinley to apply a quarantine on all people of Asian ancestry leaving the state of California, such that they could not leave without certification from Dr. Kinyoun's Marine Hospital officers. The navy patrolled the harbor in armed boats. The Chinese Six Companies, a group representing Chinese business interests in San Francisco, sued in federal court and had the quarantine lifted, arguing that as designed it applied only to interstate traffic and not to travel within California and that it denied equal legal protection to the Chinese community.

Frustrated, Kinyoun asked the Chinese to submit to inoculation with an experimental preventive drug. The Chinese Six Companies agreed. But then non-Chinese doctors in Chinatown began spreading rumors that the drug had killed people. A crowd gathered before the offices of the Chinese Six Companies, people crying out for the company's officers to be inoculated before anyone else was; the crowd wanted the business leaders to be their lab rats. The business leaders refused. The crowds were on the verge of a riot. People decided to resist the injection. When a team of Kinyoun's physicians went through town to inoculate, all the businesses and residences were closed.

IT WAS A STANDOFF OF paranoias, a fear face-off The board of health debated moving all Chinese residents to a detention camp on Mission Rock, a small island in San Francisco's harbor. Word went out in Chinatown that anyone seen going to such a camp would be killed: checking into a plague detention camp would be tantamount to admitting the existence of the plague, which many Chinese residents wanted to deny. Meanwhile, doctors were being offered large sums of money by business interests to show that plague did not exist in Chinatown. The Bulletin Bulletin ran a picture of the members of the board of health and suggested they be exterminated; a large headline read: THESE MEN ARE MARKED. Health officials fighting the plague were referred to as "the perpetrators of the greatest crime that has ever been committed against the city." California's governor, Henry Gage, worked hard to deny the plague. He a.s.sailed "plague fakers." He proposed life imprisonment for anyone claiming there was plague in San Francisco. He suggested that Joseph Kinyoun had planted plague bacilli on the Chinese man who died. Soon, all sides could agree on one thing: Dr. Kinyoun was a problem. ran a picture of the members of the board of health and suggested they be exterminated; a large headline read: THESE MEN ARE MARKED. Health officials fighting the plague were referred to as "the perpetrators of the greatest crime that has ever been committed against the city." California's governor, Henry Gage, worked hard to deny the plague. He a.s.sailed "plague fakers." He proposed life imprisonment for anyone claiming there was plague in San Francisco. He suggested that Joseph Kinyoun had planted plague bacilli on the Chinese man who died. Soon, all sides could agree on one thing: Dr. Kinyoun was a problem.

The attacks against Kinyoun were notably malicious and slanderous even in a town with a long history of yellow journalism. Kinyoun held fast; his arrogance made him immune to some extent. He turned down bribes. He went on trial in the city for contempt and was eventually found innocent. He was constantly being lampooned in cartoons such as the one that showed him being injected in the head with plague serum. His work was described by the press as "stupid and malignant." Meanwhile, he lived on the desolate island in the bay, with his wife, who was also unhappy there, and their children. He came down with an ulcer.

"Kinyoun is to go," the Chronicle Chronicle editorialized. editorialized.

In February 1901, after a new team of scientists arrived from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and confirmed six more plague cases, Governor Gage met secretly in Sacramento with the heads of the railroads. They agreed that no newspaper would ever mention that the plague had ever existed, and they orchestrated an a.s.sociated Press dispatch announcing: "[T]here was not now nor has there ever been cases of bubonic plague in California." They also sent a group of newspaper publishers to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., where the publishers met with the president and California's senators. They all agreed to clandestine plague eradication measures and arranged to have Kinyoun fired. At the end of March, Kinyoun, America's preeminent infectious disease expert, was rea.s.signed to Detroit, Michigan.

That spring, after the governor of Texas sent a telegram to the surgeon general threatening a quarantine of California if the plague was not contained, Chinatown was quietly fumigated with sulfur. (The health inspectors boasted that they had used a minimum amount of sulfur to do the job.) The Chinese Six, though they had previously admitted plague in Chinatown, now said that no cases had ever existed. Again, inspectors could find no bodies. After sixty days of inspections by state health officials, the governor shut down antiplague operations. The U.S. Surgeon General closed its federal plague eradication office. For eradicating the talk of the epidemic, Governor Gage was lauded as "the people's friend."

Then, on July 5, a Chinese undertaker accidentally brought the body of a plague victim to Dr. Rupert Blue. Blue had been a colleague of Joseph Kinyoun's and he'd replaced Kinyoun at Marine Hospital Service, and if Kinyoun was arrogant and imperious, then Blue was smooth and accommodating, a politician. Blue investigated. He p.r.o.nounced the case plague. More plague cases were discovered- on July 8, there were four deaths within forty-eight hours, in a single j.a.panese household. State officials called it sewer gas poisoning, then charged Blue with inoculating the victims with plague. It looked as if Blue might be rea.s.signed to another city as well, but this time the j.a.panese community, as opposed to the Chinese Six, would not keep the plague secret. There was a new mayor, Eugene Schmitz, the former first violinist of the San Francisco symphony, and initially he was also ready to play along with business interests-he fired health officials who insisted there was plague, and he refused to print plague statistics-but now health departments and governors from two dozen states protested California's handling of the situation. More plague reports made their way East. Health officials from around the country met in Was.h.i.+ngton and pa.s.sed a resolution against the "gross neglect" of the California Board of Health and the "obstructive influence" of Governor Gage. The states threatened a national quarantine against California. At last, plague eradication efforts began in earnest. Wooden floors were ripped up to reveal years of broken sewer pipes and cesspools. Rats were trapped all over San Francisco. The last case of plague was identified on February 19, 1904.

In 1906, after the Great San Francisco Earthquake, there was another plague outbreak in San Francisco, but the city had learned its lesson. The federal government immediately set about cleaning up the city and trapping rats. Rupert Blue was put in charge of plague eradication. This time none of the cases were in Chinatown, which may be one explanation for the quicker treatment of the disease. Officials noted that the city seemed to be infested with rats, and since the last outbreak, more and more scientific studies had confirmed the link between human plague cases and rats and rat fleas. Rat catchers used poisoned mola.s.ses and bread laced with a.r.s.enic to kill rats until two children died after ingesting the bait, at which point rat catchers used traps. To encourage the public to catch rats, a bounty often cents was paid for killed rats, and dead rat receiving stations were set up around the city. People were instructed to use gloves to handle rats and to immediately drop dead rats in kerosene or boiling water to kill the fleas. San Franciscans were good at catching rats, and the bounty for rats was so successful that it had to be cut in half.

All told, the San Francisco plague epidemic of 1906 was a completely different plague epidemic. Rupert Blue was lauded as a modern Pied Piper, and his success eventually led to his appointment as surgeon general (he attempted, unsuccessfully, to design a national health care program). He had his tricks while fighting the plague: to avoid the scrutiny of San Francis...o...b..sinessmen, he wired Was.h.i.+ngton in code: to indicate the word plague plague he used he used b.u.mpkin; b.u.mpkin; to indicate to indicate city board of health city board of health he used he used burlesque. burlesque. When the plague control campaign was finally over, Blue was honored at a banquet held in the streets. The theme of the banquet was "San Francisco is so clean a meal can be eaten in its streets." When the plague control campaign was finally over, Blue was honored at a banquet held in the streets. The theme of the banquet was "San Francisco is so clean a meal can be eaten in its streets."

THANKS TO THE PARANOIA OF politicians and businessmen during the first plague epidemic, plague had already spread from San Francisco into the rodents of California and the surrounding states, where plague remains today: there are more rodents currently infected with the plague in North America than there were in Europe at the time of the Black Death, though the modern rodents infected (prairie dogs, for example) tend to live in areas less populated by humans, as opposed to the rodents infected at the time of the Black Death. Kinyoun left the Marine Hospital Service shortly after his humiliation in San Francisco; he subsequently retired and moved to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., where he was working in the city health department when he died on February 14, 1919. Up until he arrived in San Francisco, he had had a brilliant career, and he had even spent time working in New York, where, in 1887, he had set up the Marine Hospital Service's first hygienic laboratory on Staten Island. There, he applied the principles of microbiology to cholera, and as a result, the first use of cholera culture was used to fight the entry of the disease through the port in 1898. Prior to this breakthrough, cholera epidemics had wiped out thousands of New Yorkers throughout the nineteenth century, and before being identified as a disease of poor sanitary conditions, cholera was blamed, first, on Irish immigrants, and then, at the turn of the century, on Jewish immigrants. Ironically, after helping fight this immigrant epidemic, Kinyoun spent the rest of his life complaining bitterly about his experiences in San Francisco-the eminent bacteriologist resorted to anti-Chinese and anti-Semitic slurs.

Chapter 17.

CATCHING.

AFTER THE WORLD Trade Center crumbled, the routine of the city worked like a tonic for my worries; in my view, the activities of a neighborhood corner were an opportunity for rea.s.suringly cheerful monotony that caused me to marvel perhaps unduly, to rhapsodize, on the range of traits that man comprises. I do not know much about Freud, but I have a feeling that if a rat is indeed symbolic ofa fear, then trapping a rat is, in a Freudian sense, confronting that fear, or at least putting that fear in a cage, so that when I went trapping again, it was therapeutic as well. On my second attempt to trap rats, I went with some people I know over in the city health department. The outing turned out to be historic: the city was trapping rats alive for the first time in several decades.

The group hoping to trap rats included Dan Markowski and Anne Li. Dan, the Tennessee-born vector control officer who had worked on World Trade Center rat control, was wearing a health department windbreaker, and his ponytail stuck out from underneath his cowboy hat. Anne was also dressed in a health department windbreaker and jeans. Born in Brooklyn, Anne is tall, with a dry sense of humor, and as far as rat experts go, she has a complete nonaversion to rats. She is an epidemiologist with the health department. Most of her work with rats occurs in a lab. Like me, she had never trapped a Rattus norvegicus Rattus norvegicus on the streets. Anne had a lot of complimentary things to say about rats, such as "I think rats are so underappreciated." At another point, she turned to me and said, "Rats are the smartest creatures." on the streets. Anne had a lot of complimentary things to say about rats, such as "I think rats are so underappreciated." At another point, she turned to me and said, "Rats are the smartest creatures."

We were picked up by Isaac Ruiz, an exterminator who works out of the Lower East Side extermination office. He lives in the Bronx. Issac, who was wearing a wool s.h.i.+rt and sungla.s.ses, told me that, as opposed to Dan and Anne, he was not especially eager to see rats. He is used to laying out poison for rats when they are not around.

We were all in a van going rat trapping for two reasons. First, the health department wanted an indication of how well their own rodent control measures were working; at that time, Bushwick was a test area for the city's rodent control program. The other reason was a result of the fear-rich post disaster conditions that the city endured after the World Trade Center came down. The health department was trapping in Bushwick because of plague. At the time, the health department was working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was interested in knowing about the rat populations of several major cities and how those rat populations would react if they were infected with plague. The CDC was especially interested in rats after the World Trade Center was destroyed and, a short time later, after anthrax, a biological weapon, was sent through the mail. What if someone attempted to bring plague to the city? How would the rats react? How should New York rats handle rat-infected fleas? So Dan and Anne were out in Bushwick, practicing before the arrival of the federal biologist, a rat trapping dress rehearsal, a little homework inspired to quell governmental concerns about the possibility of New York City hosting the Black Death.

And so it was on a crisp, clear morning that we pulled out of the City Hall area and drove through Chinatown and into the Lower East Side and then got stuck in traffic until at last we climbed up to the crest of the Williamsburg Bridge, where, in a brief fermata-like moment that involved a lot of neck craning, we could see from the tall, tower like housing projects of lower Manhattan with the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building behind them, over into the quilt of tenement buildings and low industrial operations that characterized our destination, the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, where I had previously (as described above) been with the city's rodent control department as they attended to a young girl bitten by a rat. Into the wilds of Brooklyn!

BUSHWICK-FIRST SETTLED BY the Dutch, who, as one translator has it, called the area Boswijk, Boswijk, meaning "heavy woods," which probably were heavy until the woods quickly filled up with Germans, who had moved across the East River from their crowded German neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. The Germans opened up breweries and, in the mid-1800s, made Bushwick the beer capital of New York, at a time when men, women, meaning "heavy woods," which probably were heavy until the woods quickly filled up with Germans, who had moved across the East River from their crowded German neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. The Germans opened up breweries and, in the mid-1800s, made Bushwick the beer capital of New York, at a time when men, women, and and children drank an average of two barrels of beer or ale a year. It was subsequently settled by English, Irish, Russian, Polish, Italian, African-American, and Puerto Rican immigrants, and-after some of those people moved out-by people from the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, India, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Bushwick was once filled with textile factories and textile workers, with breweries and brewery workers, but it was nearly destroyed in 1977. That was the year there of the blackout, a New York-wide power outage, and in Bushwick, after heavy looting-its main thoroughfare, Broadway, burned down almost completely-40 percent of the businesses closed up within the year. Still today, it is one of the poorest neighborhoods in N ew York, a place filled with abandoned lots, a place where 40 percent of the population is on government-a.s.sisted programs but where artists have just recently begun to sniff around and smell (relatively) cheap rent and lofts and other artists, a place where the city has very slowly begun to build subsidized housing. children drank an average of two barrels of beer or ale a year. It was subsequently settled by English, Irish, Russian, Polish, Italian, African-American, and Puerto Rican immigrants, and-after some of those people moved out-by people from the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, India, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Bushwick was once filled with textile factories and textile workers, with breweries and brewery workers, but it was nearly destroyed in 1977. That was the year there of the blackout, a New York-wide power outage, and in Bushwick, after heavy looting-its main thoroughfare, Broadway, burned down almost completely-40 percent of the businesses closed up within the year. Still today, it is one of the poorest neighborhoods in N ew York, a place filled with abandoned lots, a place where 40 percent of the population is on government-a.s.sisted programs but where artists have just recently begun to sniff around and smell (relatively) cheap rent and lofts and other artists, a place where the city has very slowly begun to build subsidized housing.

In Bushwick, our van stopped alongside an abandoned lot underneath an elevated subway train. As the train thundered overhead, the light flickered on the street below: a children's flip-book scene of Myrtle Avenue would show the green and seemingly grayish green of a vacant lot filled with construction rubble and long-weathered paper trash, with crabgra.s.s, dandelions, and th.o.r.n.y vines, with the raggedy-leaved mugwort that is a city relative of Western sagebrush. It was an abandoned lot of urban America, the outer-borough habitat of the North American wild rat.

In a few minutes, we were laying out traps. Dan joked that he was not permitted to describe the bait he was using: "We can't tell you the ingredients," Dan said.

I looked over him and he smiled. "It's peanut b.u.t.ter," he said.

"All you need is enough for them to smell," Anne said.

"Just a little dab'11 do ya," Dan sang.

Anne went on at knowledgeable length about rat populations: "The general consensus," Anne said, "is that if you see one, then there are ten, and if you see them during the day, then you don't know what you've got." She talked about the behavior of groups of rats, about how rats share their stress within a rat colony, how they pa.s.s it on, like a cold; when one rats enters a colony and is stressed for some reason-because of aggressive behavior it faces from a larger rat, because of a lack of food-the rest of the colony will soon be stressed too. This group behavior is thought to be regulated by pheromones, substances that when secreted influence the behavior of other animals of the same species. Anne said that this kind of behavior regulation is often true for humans as well, and she mentioned a study that one of her graduate school professors had conducted among rats, and then among women. The human experiment, conducted among a group of young women living in a Chicago dormitory, showed that pheromones helped regulate the menstrual cycles amongst the group. One of the women in the dorm was a future senator for Bushwick and for all of New York State, Hillary Clinton.

Anne motioned across the lot, to where she had just placed a trap, and said, "Frankly, one of those vines had rat p.i.s.s on it, which will help. You know, some people ask, 'Do you have to use new traps?' And that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Even stressed-rat p.i.s.s is good."

I watched them lay down traps for a while, looking for a secret or trick. They were merely watching for possible rat activity, for obvious along-the-wall corridors, for cozy rat places.

Issac also laid out a couple of traps. He was a little tentative. When he got toward the back of the lot, a broken fence opened on the backyard of an old tenement building. A dog was barking. "That sucker gets loose and I know I'm dead," said Isaac.

Two men walked by and shouted out, "What are you doing?"

We told them we were trapping rats.

"The whole place is full of rats," the first man said.

"I catch 'em behind the fridge," the other man said.

"We want them alive," Dan said.

"They're hard to catch alive," the first man said.