CHICAGO: THE NATION’S RATTIEST CITY

For the third straight year, Chicago topped U.S. metro areas in pest-control company Orkin’s Top 50 Rattiest Cities. Orkin ranks cities by the amount of rodent treatments the company completed in the year that ended Sept. 15. Chicago’s Orkin companies fielded 39,000 rat complaints in 2017, a 30-percent increase over 2016. Here’s the Top 20:
1. Chicago
2. New York
3. Los Angeles
4. San Francisco – Oakland
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Philadelphia
7. Detroit
8. Baltimore
9. Seattle – Tacoma
10. Dallas – Ft. Worth
11. Denver
12. Minneapolis – St. Paul
13. Cleveland – Akron
14. Atlanta
15. Boston
16. Hartford – New Haven
17. Portland, Oregon
18. Miami – Ft. Lauderdale
19. Indianapolis
20. Houston
* We’ll get that trophy in the mail to you right away, Chicago.
* Well, I suppose NOT coming in Number 1 in rats would be a good selling point for these other cities’ tourism boards.
* It’s a welcome break from all the gun deaths, I bet.
* Actually, there’d be even more rats but some got hit by stray bullets.
* 30% more rats than 2016? Doesn’t that mean Orkin is doing a really lousy job?
* Maybe Orkin breeds rats in the basement and releases them into the city at night.
* Time to dump more baby alligators into the sewers.