A few short minutes into the second episode of And Just Like That’s third season, we viewers see Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw typing away in her lovely Gramercy Park garden. The light is warm. A cute squirrel chews in a tree. The flowers bloom. The heels are high. And then—rats.
In video footage of tsunamis, what might be even more eerie than the devastation wrought by the wave are the moments of calm that come before, when the tide gets sucked away from the sand. This is how I felt watching Carrie, writing an ill-advised historical fiction novel in that Instagram story typewriter font, as rats swarmed her garden, a mere whisker away from her satin Maison Margiela Tabi Monster bow pumps (which originally retailed for a casual $1,920). The rats all scurry out of an ominous rustling bush, making their own little Fast and the Furriest sequel.
A plagued (get it) Carrie sets about hiring an exterminating company, “Rat-A-Tat” (cute), employees of which proceed to tear up her entire garden. She then must hire a hot landscape architect played by Logan Marshall-Green, who is a serious actor but also the guy from The O.C. who gets shot to the sounds of Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek,” aka the “mmmm whatcha say” song. I love television!
For all that Sex and the City is meant to include New York City as the fifth lead or whatever, the show featured very few New York City rats, perhaps due to its uptown environs. Mice only show up in two episodes—the one where Charlotte dates a “gay-straight” man (politically incorrect, also tea, Happy Pride Month) who freaks out when a mouse squeaks in his perfect kitchen, and the one where Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Alexandr Petrovsky must murder a mouse in Carrie’s normal apartment, back in the days before she became a real estate baron.
But rats are a reality that all New Yorkers must face. A 2023 study revealed that there are about three million rats living in the city. Mayor Eric “my haters become my waiters” Adams subsequently appointed the city’s first “rat czar,” tasked with reducing the rodent population with initiatives like rat birth control and putting garbage in cans instead of, say, the street. AJLT—always on the pulse! And so I couldn’t help but wonder: is it possible to keep your NYC yard rat-free?
Yards are not only for the very rich in New York, with rats popping in and out of gardens across the five boroughs. And rodents are a great equalizer—Carrie lives in very posh Gramercy, but still, the rats came for her. “Rats don t check your zip code before they step foot in your yard,” says my friend Tara McCauley, a New York City-based interior designer (Tara spelled backwards is A Rat. Coincidence?). She suggests as much preparation as possible.
“It will come as little surprise to hear that this interior designer believes outsourcing to a professional is always a good idea,” McCauley says. “I recommend bringing in a professional pest-proofing expert before you begin decorating your yard. They ll know exactly which vulnerabilities and entry points to mitigate from the start. It’s best to have that done before you start adding decorative fencing, not after.”
But no one should get their hopes up for a yard free of Remy and his emotionally toxic father’s gang from Ratatouille. “The idea of rat-proofing a New York yard honestly makes me laugh,” says floral designer and Home Garden CT-NY design correspondent Caleb Kane. “I mean, when has trying to outsmart nature ever ended well for anyone? Sure, you could go full Fort Knox with traps, baits, and sprinkle a little poison around like you’re seasoning a cast-iron cancer skillet. But personally, I prefer to work with nature, not against it.”
When asked if it’s possible to keep rats entirely out of the garden in New York City, garden designer and artist Landon Newton gave a gentle yet firm “no,” while also taking a benevolent approach. “Rats live here too—it’s about encouraging them to kindly live elsewhere,” she says. “The key is staying vigilant. I never use poison or sticky traps. Instead: remove food sources, monitor for pathways, and disrupt their scent trails by spraying down surfaces with water or using strong-smelling repellents (they hate dryer sheets). If you notice burrows, call in a professional exterminator, ideally one who avoids poison and uses dry ice or CO2. Humane options exist!”
Kane, Newton, and interior designer Maude Etkin all suggest growing aromatic herbs like mountain mint, sage, lavender, or rue to both serve as rat deterrents and fuel for a lush garden. “I would recommend planting things rats won’t touch,” says Kane. “Heavily scented herbs are your secret weapon. And no, I don’t mean marijuana, though that’s an idea.”
There is no one solution. “It’s all about balance and persistence,” says Newton. “A concrete contractor once told me, ‘Rats can fit through a hole the size of a quarter—and you know what this front garden is? One big hole.’ The solution isn’t paving over your garden. A friend’s kid once built a ‘rat hotel’ from a cardboard box and proudly placed it in their yard—to his mom’s horror and amusement. Welcome to New York!”
Etkin also emphasized that there is no way to really keep the rats out (though she did remind me that they don’t like peppermint oil). “Instead of aiming for a perfectly rat-free garden, focus on making it rat-resistant with smart design,” she says. “Make sure your garden is clean, keep beds elevated and tidy, and avoid creating cozy places for them to hide. Getting ahead of the problem is the real key.”
I live in Los Angeles now, due to weakness, but rats were a regular part of my New York City routine. I shall never forget the time I woke up early to go to Rockaway Beach only to find a pair of dead baby rats curled up together in the heel of one of my Birkenstocks; nor the time I came home from a movie to the sight of an elderly neighbor hitting a rodent-filled trash bag with a baseball bat as blood dribbled onto the sidewalk; nor the summer of 2013, when I rolled out a “no open-toed shoes in Manhattan” rule after not one but two rats ran over my foot outside of a Chinatown nightclub. This AJLT episode, “The Rat Race,” filled me with many warm memories.
“We put up with a lot of objectively unpleasant things to live in the best city in the world, in my completely unbiased opinion,” says McCauley. “Rats are one of the more egregious indignities we New Yorkers accept. I’d still rather die than live in the suburbs.” Besides, as she points out—suburban backyards are full of ticks, anyway.
