Because Ohio State's off-campus residential area is a place overflowing with trash and college kids who don't give a shit, mutant-sized rats are as much an off-campus staple as underage kids drinking Natty Light in toddler-sized, blow-up swimming pools.
But it looks as if Columbus has had enough of these rats.
From the Columbus Dispatch's Mark Ferenchik:
The city is sending its rat patrol to the University District to see whether too many rodents have moved into the neighborhood filled with students and others.
Health officials could have found at least one this week — a flattened, 8-incher in the middle of Indianola Avenue near E. Norwich Avenue.
“That’s huge, dude,” said Connor Mandalla, a 19-year-old Ohio State University sophomore from the Cleveland suburb of Brecksville who lives on Indianola. “That’s disgusting.”
The city earmarked $150,000 this year in the fight against rats, and after city health officials inspect the off-campus area (spoiler: they have a rat problem), the inspectors will head to Franklinton.
Unless their plan is to evict slumlords preying on transient college kids or getting college-aged kids to suddenly care about the shanty-town in which they dwell... I think the rats are more than capable of surviving this purge.
