Other Lives in the Big Apple

I’ve lived for many years in an old apartment building in New York and, for all the years I’ve spent in this elevator building, I’ve never had a problem with mice.  Well, never until now.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a half-dozen mice run along the baseboard under a radiator and by my refrigerator.  According to the building’s “super,” construction work in another apartment disrupted the normal life of the mice and they are scattering.  Using glue mice traps supplied by an exterminator, three mice were trapped and died.  Now my private “war” with these tiny little creatures is over as the mice have retuned to the building’s infrastructure and no longer appear to be coming out.

My mice problem led me to think about all the other “wild” creatures that call New York home.   The most common mouse is dubbed “house mice” and is about 5 inches long (not including its tail), has brown or gray fur and large ears. House mice can come into any home they can get into and make a nest wherever they can find a quiet spot. (“Deer mice” are mostly outdoor creature but do live in attics or basements.)

There are no estimates as to the number of mice in the city.  However, the City government finds that nearly 25 percent — 680,000 households — report seeing mice or rats, or signs of mice or rats, in their home or residential building.  However, as The New York Times reports, “There are an estimated three million rats in New York, but in the absence of a proper census, there is really no way to know how many.”

There are two types of rats in the city. “Norway rats” — also known as “brown rats” or “sewer rats” — are the most prevalent and are about 9 inches long with tails of at least 6 inches. They live primarily in basements and on ground floors, but can be found in home and food store garbage dumps. “Roof rats” are slightly smaller than Norway rats at around 7 inches long but with a tail that could be as long as 10 inches. They can scale tree are often dwell in roofs and attics.

In the face the COVID pandemic, New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio launched an “open restaurants” program in June 2020, offering a lifeline to the hospitality industry. At its height, there were some 12,000 establishments offering outdoor services.  However, these outdoor “sheds” led to what one report claims that “complaints hotline mentioning rodents have jumped this year, 15% up on pre-pandemic levels.”

Ironically, in May 2024, Mayor Eric Adams was issued a ticket by a city health inspector who found fresh rat droppings and a rat burrow “at the front left base of the staircase of the property” he owns the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

Numerous bugs call the city home.  The city finds that some 880,000 households – about 30 percent of households — report having cockroaches in their home. A 2021 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau found that nearly 1 in 6 New Yorkers reported seeing cockroaches in their homes, compared to 1 in 9 households nationally. Cockroaches are far more common in low-income households than higher-income ones, and this disparity is greatest among Hispanic households.

There are numerous kinds of roaches in city homes.  The most common are the “American Cockroach,” typically found in moist basements and lower floors, and the “German Cockroaches,” which is smaller and can be found anywhere inside the home.  Cockroaches range in size between 1/2 to 3 inches in length and are a reddish-brown or dark-brown color. “Waterbugs” — alsoknown as oriental cockroach as well as toe biter, electric-light bug or alligator tick — are bigger than cockroaches and are tan to black and are approximately 1-inch long.

Other bugs that dwell in the Big Apple include: (i) “bed bugs,” nocturnal creature that like warm mattresses and often feed on someone sleeping on the bed; (ii) flees, wingless creatures that bite through skin and suck blood of both mammals and birds; (iii) termites, that mostly feed on dead plant material and cellulose, in the form of wood and soil; (iv) flies, a half-dozen varieties that can carry disease-causing contaminants which can causetyphoid, cholera, Salmonella, dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax and worms; (v) fruit flies, a half-dozen types of flies often found in kitchens and garbage areas; (vi) long-tailed aphid eater flies (aka syrphid or flower flies), they pollinate NYC plants; (vii) golden digger wasps, they pollinate plants; (viii) ants, ten variants that live in underground communities headed by a queen or queens; (ix) moths, including the large, motted-green Pandorus Sphinx Moth (aka Hawk Moth) and (x) caterpillars and butterflies, up to 110 species and include the Black Swallowtail Butterfly.

Adding to the bug problem are mosquitoes that flourish in a warm, moist climate, especially in the summer.  Infected mosquitos are spreading a new West Nile virus to humans as well as birds, horses and other mammals.  The city government has a map that traces mosquitoes by area.

Then there are spiders.  There is many different types of both male and females spiders and are recognized by their cobwebs — thin silken thread structures found in one’s home. The webs are designed to catch prey.  In addition, there are a dozen or so beetles as well as a handful of different types of mites and weevils.

Finally, there are the bees. The Parks Department reports that the city “is home to more than 200 species of bees” and they pollinate approximately 68 percent of flowers in parks and residential neighborhoods.  Among them are Brown Belted Bumblebees, Ligated Furrow Bees (aka Mining or Sweet Bees), Leaf Cutter Bees.

Many New Yorks have domesticated pets, be they any and all kinds of cats or dogs, birds or fish, gerbils or hamsters and even turtles and some reptiles, among others. But these are domesticated animals, not feral or wild creatures that call the city home.

Adrian Benepe, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, told the Times, “I grew up in the parks.”  He added, “[t]here were never red-tailed hawks or Peregrine falcons or bald eagles. You didn’t even see raccoons; there were pigeons and rats and squirrels, that was it. Now there are bald eagles all over the city. This winter [2021] they were in place you haven’t seen them in generations, and they were hunting in Prospect Park.”

There has been a growth in the number and kind of feral animals in the city.

The Daily News reported in 2023 that — like the rat population — the feral-cat population has exploded.  It estimated that there are between 500,000 to 1 million cats now living on the city streets. “These feral cats running amok everywhere,” a cat rescuer told the paper.

Among other feral animals calling the city home are chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, red foxes and skunks.  In addition, in Central Park there are raptors, bats and a coyote; in Statin Island are beavers, salamanders and leopard frogs; in the Bronx are a bobcat, mink and foxes.  In the waters passing through and around the city one can now find endangered alewife herrings and American eels in the Bronx River as well as osprey and egrets lurk nearby; in Queens are baby damselflies, sea turtles and baby seals; and in Brooklyn are exotic insects.  In the Hudson River, oysters and seahorses can be found at piers.

New York is alive with humans and living creatures of every kind.  Humans live in a postmodern city, with nearly everyone clutching their mobile phone as they walk down a street, shop in a store, eat in a coffee shop or restaurant, ride on a bus or subway or simple live at home.  Nature can be found all around New Yorkers, whether trees on streets, public parks, gardens in home yards or simply flower pots on windowsills or living rooms.

Sadly, the full scope of the other living creatures that call New York home – both domesticated and feral – is often not fully appreciated.  It took a visit by mice in my apartment to open my eyes to some of all the other creatures that the call the city home.

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