Now, subway workers in New York City are drawing attention to the rat infestation in the underground tunnels and platforms of this famous public transportation system. The Transport Workers Union Local 100, the city’s largest transit union, has created a website — www.ratfreesubways.com. A feature on the site encourages New York commuters to upload photos of rats taken in the subway. Visitors to the site can rate the rats and the photographer of the nastiest rat wins a monthly transit pass.

To illustrate how bad the situation in the subway system is and how confident and comfortable the rats are, there’s an awful video at RatFreeSubways.com showing a brown rat dragging an entire slice of pizza under and through the subway tracks. The union is demanding that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) do more to clean the subway stations and reduce the rat population. They hope the website will shame the MTA into taking action. The MTA claims it is doing all it can and needs more funds to do more.

New York City’s Department of Health and Sanitation said that rat complaints were down about five percent last year. But that’s not saying much, as the New York Post estimates that there are 25 million rats in the city. However, the MTA has just appointed a new chairman, Joseph Lhota, and the rats might consider packing their bags and moving out. Lhota was the city’s official “rat czar” in the 1990s under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and was tasked back then with reducing the rat plague.

This week’s "Wacky on the Web" was suggested by Shamsudeen Fagbo, DVM, national coordinator, Zoonotic Diseases Unit, General Directorate of Parasitic and Infectious Diseases, Ministry of Health.