Rats Overrun Manhattan Park

MYFOXNY.COM - A New York City blogger recorded footage of rats overrunning a Manhattan park to the point where he jokingly renamed it Rat Zoo.

Paolo Mastrangelo recorded dozens of rats on the sidewalks, bushes and cracks in the ground.

He wrote on nyctheblog.com that an NYPD officer expressed resigned anger at the rats overrunning the park. "Look at that thing," he exclaimed, pointing and shaking his head in disgust, "it's as big as a cat!"

The park is located on Leonard Street between Lafayette and Centre Streets near the courts complex.

According to the New York City Parks Web site, Collect Pond Park was a favorite spot for picnics and ice-skating throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early nineteenth century, however, New York City had transformed the sparkling waters into a communal open sewer.

During the first decade of the 19th century, the polluted, plague-inducing Collect Pond was filled in and the area has since been home to public executions, a house of detention, and a section of the notorious Five Points slum.

In 1960 the Parks Department took control of the 1-acre park. The park is supposed to undergo a $3.5 million dollar renovation by the Lower Manhattan Development corporation. The bidding process is still underway.

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