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Snapping a rat’s neck with a spring-loaded trap … fine. Electrocuting a rodent with a zap-trap … OK.
But for a pair of progressive New York City elected officials, those stuck-till-you-starve glue traps are just cruel and unusual punishment for the Big Apple’s pizza-loving vermin.
State Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) are sticking up for their least popular — and biggest growing — constituency through new legislation that seeks to ban the sale and use of glue traps as too cruel to gullible rats lured by peanut butter or cheese.
“They just basically suffer and dehydrate or starve until up until they die, or bleed out until they die,” Brisport told The Post on Wednesday about the bill he introduced earlier this week with Epstein.
“So it’s not only ineffective, it’s inhumane,” Brisport added.
With rat populations surging during the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers have registered at least 30,811 rodent complaints to 311 since the beginning of the year — more than any other year since the city began compiling such records in 2010 when just 10,500 complaints were made.
Experts told The Post that glue traps are not particularly effective compared to other types of devices that aim to curb the city’s growing rat population by poisoning them, spring-snapping their necks, or zapping them with a very unhealthy jolt of electricity.
One weakness of glue traps — which lose their stickiness once dust and other debris accumulate — is how something like a stuck cockroach might tip off clever rats about the danger ahead, according to an acclaimed 1998 study by the University of Nebraska cited by the lawmakers.
“Not only are some [rodents] aware of the dangerous glue surfaces, but they are also adept at learning or knowing how to neutralize them,” reads the study.
Glue traps also sometimes stick to furry friends like dogs and cats while leaving any human in earshot of a struggling rat with vivid memories of scratching, screaming, and screeching to pass on to friends.
“I’ll never forget the story I heard from a peer in college once they had a glue-based trap in their residence and they remember they woke up to the sound of squealing and they like went and saw the trap. There was a rat who had gotten caught on it. And the rat had tried to escape and in doing so had essentially ripped its skin off and then fell onto the other side and was just traveling the other side with exposed skin,” Brisport recalled more than a decade later.
Banning the sale of glue traps would push New Yorkers toward more effective rodent solutions from better traps to improved sanitation practices that deprive rats and mice of food, especially from the garbage New Yorkers leave unprotected on the sidewalk for pick-up, according to Epstein.
“There are ways to do a better job of sealing walls and insulating and using other techniques,” he said.
“Landlords should containerize their trash,” the democratic socialist Brisport added in a separate interview.
Passing the bill when the Legislature reconvenes next year could prove tricky considering the lack of sympathy most New Yorkers have for rats, mice, or any other vermin.
If passed by the state Senate and Assembly and signed into law by the governor, exterminators would have up to one year after the law takes effect to use up their remaining stocks of glue traps, according to the legislative language.
But Epstein said the likes of Pizza Rat deserve some consideration even while dying because they are sentient creatures with minds and feelings more like a dog than a stone-dumb cockroach.
“I appreciate that you don’t care that they suffer – but we do a lot in society to make sure that creatures aren’t suffering,” Epstein told The Post of what he will say to two-legged constituents curious about the bill.