A rat is made out of meat. One would think that that would give them *some* economic value. Granted, turning them directly into ratburgers seems a dubious prospect; difficult to process, filthy, likely filled with disease, toxins and parasites, much like your average filthy hippie. But turning them into fertilizer, or food for some other critters? There’s got to be a way to make a buck off a rat. And by extension, there’s gotta be a way to put Baltimore on a paying basis. Take this bit of footage, for example:
Those rats all seemed to run in much the same direction, which means that with a bit of planning they could have all run into traps. A buck or two a rat (or a buck or two per pound of rat, whatever) is probably well in excess of their strict economic value as plant food, but with the vast sums that have been poured into Baltimore – to no recognizable advantage – it seems that a public-private partnership could pay a bit above market value for home and business owners to make a few hundred bucks every few nights gathering up rats which will be processed into fertilizer for the local “organic” growers of trendy green leafy “food” for the consumption of vegans.