The White House has a literal rat problem

The White House's biggest rats surely have stories to tell. Too bad they're being killed off.

Outside the executive mansion, traps have been set up to poison not the leakers who seem so willing to spill President Trump's secrets, but the literal animals that have taken over Washington. Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs noticed the black boxes, set up amid an absurd rodent surge throughout the capital city, and tweeted photos Thursday:

Rat talk really ramped up in December, when Fox News' John Roberts tweeted about a "big brown rat" scurrying near his foot on the White House's North Lawn. It soon became clear that the rodents were ubiquitous in the D.C. swamp, with rat complaints to city government hitting an all-time high in 2017. The city allocated an additional $906,000 to tackle the problem starting in January, but the White House, it seems, went for the taxpayer-friendly option.

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