Animal rescue volunteers on Long Island are racing to find new homes for more than 450 pet rats collected from a condemned house in Rocky Point, a community roughly 70 miles east of Manhattan, as a major winter storm approaches the region.
A group of about ten volunteers with the Strong Island Animal Rescue League has spent the past couple of weeks rounding up the domesticated white rodents at the property. Frankie Floridia, the group’s president, said they have collected more than 450 animals so far with roughly 30 still to catch.
“What makes it challenging catching rats is that they’re in the walls, they’re everywhere,” Floridia told the AP on Thursday. “This is a unique situation. We haven’t had something like this ever.”
The rescue group has been working with a local animal hospital to treat the rats, many of which are infected with mites and suffering from eye infections, bite wounds and other ailments, said Erica Kutzing, the group’s vice president. She said only about 10 rats have so far been euthanized.
More than 200 of the animals have been placed in permanent or temporary arrangements, including fostering or adoption by local families, according to Kutzing. She credited rescue groups in Virginia, Connecticut and other states with stepping up to take in more than 50 rats so far, with volunteers working to safely transport them out of state.
“A lot of people find them to be less desirable animals or pets, and kind of outcasts of the animal world,” Kutzing said. “And so when you love the underdog and you care about the underdog, you tend to be a kinder person.”
The group is still seeking homes for more than 200 of the rescued rats. Kutzing said they are encouraging people to take in two or three, noting that rats are not solitary creatures. Floridia said the animals deserve a second chance, describing them as clean and capable of being friendly pets similar to hamsters.
Kutzing said the infestation appears to have been a case of the situation spiraling out of the homeowner’s control rather than a deliberate breeding operation. She noted that rats give birth roughly every 20 days to litters of nearly a dozen babies and can reach maturity in just weeks.
“It snowballs fast, so if people are struggling with something like hoarding, for example, it’s going to send you deeper into that hole,” Kutzing said.
The homeowner has been charged with animal cruelty, neglect and endangering the welfare of a child. Police said a toddler had been living at the house for weeks in unsanitary conditions where the floors were covered in rat feces and urine, and rodents were freely roaming. The homeowner pleaded not guilty at her arraignment earlier this month, according to prosecutors. Her lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MSI previously reported on the broader rescue effort underway for these animals, noting that with roughly 30 more rats to catch and an advancing storm, volunteers were racing against time. That article detailed the initial push to find homes for the animals as temperatures dropped.