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Brooklyn's Opossum Problem Was Brooklyn Made
By
Jaya Saxena
Published Sep 19, 2010
Modified Oct 5, 2012
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By
Jaya Saxena
Published Sep 19, 2010
Modified Oct 5, 2012
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(Photo courtesy aaanimalcontrol.com) Time to send in the Chinese Needle Snakes. In an attempt to get rid of the rat problem in Brooklyn, officials unleashed opossums (the rats of the marsupial order) into the Brooklyn streets to attack and kill the rats. Now, Brooklyn has an opossum problem. Oh, and it still has a rat problem. And a tornado problem. Up next: locusts?
It's unclear just which city officials thought up the plan (neither the Sanitation Department nor the Health Department had any record of it), but notes from a Community Board 15 meeting in 2007 read, "City brought possums in to take care of rats." Councilman Domenic Recchia said the original idea was that the opossums would simply die off after killing the rats, but as CB15 chairwoman Theresa Scavo told the Post, "They are everywhere...Didn't any of those brain surgeons realize that the opossums were going to multiply?" Well, the reproductive patterns of Opossums aren't exactly a brain surgeon's forte...
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Jaya Saxena
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