"As Rats Persist, Transit Agency Hopes to Curb Their Births"

"They have thwarted the poisons. They have evaded the traps."

"And on Monday, the rats of the New York City subway system received another shot across the bow from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

 'I want to warn you,' Mark Lebow, chairman of the authority’s transit and bus committee, said at a public meeting at the agency’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters. 'We’re going to discuss rat sterilization.'

The authority detailed its plans on Monday for a pilot program intended to curb the fertility of female rats, pledging to test a product — administered to rats orally — that accelerates natural egg loss and sterilizes the animals permanently."

Matt Flegenheimer reports for the New York Times March 11, 2013.