You’ve seen the signs hastily tacked up all over the city: “This alley has been targeted for rats.” A bold proclamation of genocide made by deskbound, hidebound bureaucrats who only hope the citizenry will never ask why.

Is it a line drawn in the sand to provoke a fight? Or a simple, solemn grave marker for those fallen in battle? The rat fights a losing battle in our city. In 1979 over six million rats roamed the darkened streets of Chicago. Now those same streets have been “cleansed” to a population of merely 500,000.

And what reason is given for this taxpayer subsidized slaughter of innocents? What threat do these furry rodents pose to modern society, that we should turn on our fellow city dwellers with knives and poison in sudden treasonous anger? Why must the rats be driven from our alleys? Because the rat knows what the Huns knew, the Visigoths knew, what all the invading hordes knew: Control the alleys and Rome will fall! Because the rat knows what the bureaucrats wining and dining down in city hall refuse to acknowledge. The rat knows what is inevitable. The lion may be the king of the jungle, but he’s not the final link of the food chain. Yes, dear lion, enjoy your crown for the moment because soon the rats will pick your bones.