The White House has a literal rat problem

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter)

published 11 April 2019

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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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.