New Yorkers are used to seeing rats on the street but they are not always small, furry ones. Sometimes they are inflatable and taller than giraffes.

American unions use giant balloon rodents as a protest symbol, parking them outside company offices to highlight labor disputes.

“It’s used to display injustice,” said union organizer Justice Favor, beside a towering air-filled rat with scabby belly, buck teeth and demon eyes.

His organization, representing laborers, set up the rat outside the Manhattan offices of a developer it accuses of paying construction workers non-union wages one recent morning.

“The public stop and want to know what’s going on. It’s a great tool to make folks aware,” the 37-year-old told AFP.

Inflatable rats were first used by a union in Chicago around 30 years ago. They started becoming a familiar sight on the streets of New York in the late 1990s.

“Scabby the rat,” as it has become known, has its own Twitter page and even featured in an episode of hit mob drama “The Sopranos.”

Not all passers-by know what the inflatables are about though, so union workers stand on the sidewalk and hand out information about each specific dispute.

“I first thought it was because of all the rats on the subway. Then I read the leaflet,” 38-year-old hair stylist Zarinah Ali told AFP.

– Cigar-chomping fat cats –

The inflatables are made by Big Sky Balloons, an Illinois-based company which proudly boasts on its website to be Scabby’s creator.

They can reportedly cost thousands of dollars.

New York unions own dozens of the balloons, which range in height from six feet (1.83 meters) to 25 feet. Some look more fierce than others.

They also have inflatables depicting fat cats smoking cigars while clutching bags of money, pigs in waistcoats and top hats and a cockroach.

“If we were to assemble them all on the same day it would look like Macy’s parade!” union leader Mike Hellstrom told AFP, referencing New York’s annual Thanksgiving day march.

Hellstrom, who is credited with introducing the rats to New York, says they are hideous, looking to give “a true representation of what exploitation looks like.”

Management often, understandably, get irritated by the depiction and have even burst rats with a pin on occasion.

The inflatables are increasingly coming under a more serious form of attack though, which threatens to exterminate them and raises arguments about freedom of expression in America.

– Court battle –

In 2017, President Donald Trump appointed lawyer Peter Robb as general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency created to protect workers’ rights.

His office has since filed cases saying the inflatables amount to illegal picketing.

Earlier this year, the NLRB went to court to try to prevent a union from displaying Scabby the rat outside a supermarket on New York’s Staten Island.

A judge sided with the union, upholding previous rulings that the rat is protected by America’s first amendment, which provides for freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.

The legal battle is ongoing though, meaning the fight is far from over.

“They are still aggressively trying to condemn this symbol, basically what would be the first illegal symbol in American jurisprudential history,” the union’s lawyer in the case, Tamir Rosenblum, told AFP.

The NLRB refused to comment.

Labor historian Joshua Freeman, a professor at City University of New York, says the labor relations board has always been politicized but seems more concerned presently with protecting employers than employees.

“(They’re thinking) ‘We’ve got our guy in the White House. Let’s ride this wave as far as we can go,” he told AFP.

As far as union bosses are concerned, the rats will never be driven from New York’s streets.

“They can continue to try to attack us, but it will be met with 100 percent resistance. I’m prepared to get arrested for the rat,” said Hellstrom.

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Matthew Maloney, known as “Mad Matt”, was charged following a raid by RSPCA investigators after the bizarre stunt in January, which attracted hundreds of thousands of online views.

The 25-year-old admitted one count of animal cruelty in Brisbane Magistrates Court and was ordered to complete 100 hours of community service, while being slapped with the pet ban.

Magistrate Suzette Coates described him as a “narcissist” and he expressed remorse, although he told reporters outside court that his actions “weren’t that bad”, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The video shows Maloney storming into a room, biting off the rat’s head and washing it down with three shots of vodka. He then gets punched in the face and has a chair broken over his back before saying “beat that”.

The clip was reportedly an attempt to create a disturbing new social-media challenge.

He was unrepentant at the time after a string of comments branding him disgusting.

“All your comments are cracking me up and not one person out there will be able to say anything that will make me feel bad or make me regret what i did,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Its mother nature and mans gotta eat!”

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Matthew Maloney, 24, was charged with animal cruelty following a raid by RSPCA investigators after the bizarre stunt in January.

He appeared briefly in the Brisbane Magistrates Court, making no plea, with the case adjourned until April 6, a court official said.

The video shows Maloney storming into a room, allegedly biting off the rat’s head and washing it down with three shots of vodka. He then gets punched in the face and has a chair broken over his back before saying “beat that”.

The clip, which remains on his “Mad Matts vids” Facebook page and been viewed more than 230,000 times, was reportedly an attempt to create a disturbing new social-media challenge.

After a string of comments branding him disgusting, Maloney posted a reply.

“All your comments are cracking me up and not one person out there will be able to say anything that will make me feel bad or make me regret what i did,” he wrote.

“Its mother nature and mans gotta eat!”

The post Cruelty charges for Australian who ‘bit head’ off live rat appeared first on Digital Journal.

Three health officials have been suspended over the incident at the Guntur Government Hospital in Andhra Pradesh state where the 10-day-old boy was being treated for a urinary tract problem.

His mother, Chavali Lakshmi, said she alerted staff after noticing some of her son’s fingers appeared to have been nibbled off during his stay in the neonatal intensive care unit.

“Our son was about to undergo a surgery but we noticed wounds on his right hand on Wednesday. Rats had nibbled them (fingers) off,” Lakshmi told TV reporters.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said he has suspended three officials and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

“Shocked and deeply disturbed after learning that a baby boy died after bitten by rats in Guntur hospital,” Naidu said on Twitter.

“Warned officials that such an incident should not recur.”

The hospital’s top official, medical superintendent T. Venugopala Rao, could not be contacted for comment despite repeated attempts.

But he was quoted in the Times of India newspaper as saying the boy’s death occurred despite putting up rat mesh in the neonatal intensive care unit after receiving complaints about rodents.

“It is an unfortunate incident,” he said.

Most of India’s 1.2 billion-strong population rely on under-staffed and run-down government hospitals for free treatment.

Last year, a hospital in the central state of Madhya Pradesh hired pest controllers after incidents of rodents damaging hospital equipment and biting patients.

The post Newborn dies after rat bites in Indian hospital: Mother appeared first on Digital Journal.

The video explains that rats have a lot of endurance, as well as flexibility. They can also swim for three days and are capable of holding their breath underwater for up to three minutes.

The video also mentions how rats sneak into manhole covers open to the street, and that residential sewer pipes feed into the main tunnel. This might lead the rat to thinking it is a great opportunity for exploration.

Rats can scale just about any vertical surface, thanks to their sharp claws. Eventually they can end up in the toilet, desperately trying to get out of it.

A sewer system can be a great source for rats. This is because large amounts of food are sometimes flushed down the toilet. Rats may get desperate and if that happens, they can feast on undigested food in human feces.

If a person flushes the toilet, rats can swim right back out into the drainage system. If people want to avoid an encounter with a rat in their toilet, then they could flush it before they go to the bathroom.

The post This is how rats can get into your toilet appeared first on Digital Journal.

Powis said at first she didn’t know what it was, but once she did finally realize it was the head of a rat, she thought it was horrible. She added that it was fresh and pink, as well as a bit squashed. She said it mist have been frozen right after it was severed.

Powis was going to use the spinach, which was Asda’s own-brand, which she purchased from her local Asda branch, to prepare a meal for her mother on January 19.

Powis phoned Asda and complained to them, and they did apologize to her, but she claims that the Asda branch didn’t take her complaint seriously.

She said the way they acted was as if it happened on a daily basis, and was told to just bring the spinach back to the store.

The Wycombe District Council was notified about the incident and it is investigating it. An Asda spokesman said they will work with local authorities while they conduct their investigation.

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