Posted on 02/28/2007 9:04:41 AM PST by tobyhill
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Exterminators began sweeping a Kansas City neighborhood infested with rats after one of the rodents crawled into a baby's crib and severely disfigured the girl's face.
Authorities said the girl's parents put her in a crib next to their bed early Sunday and awoke a few hours later, when a heart and breathing monitor alarm went off. The 4-week-old baby, which had been born prematurely, was lying in a pool of blood with her nose and part of her upper lip chewed off.
The parents found rat feces in the crib. Police believe milk or formula that had leaked onto the baby attracted the rodent.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Oh G-d, how awful.
(avoiding the inevitable 'Rat jokes)
The pathetic cesspool, formerly known as Kansas City, MO (once a shining star of the home of the Pony Express, home to Walt Disney and Joan Crawford)has been as much of a Socialism Home on the Muddy Mo as is NO LA.
A horrible story. Poor baby half eaten by rats, hard to imagine.
I lived in Independence most of last year and worked in KC and I know exactly what you are talking about. The only thing of interest in KC anymore is Crown Plaza and that's going downhill fast.
How does that apply to this tragedy?
Since it is not typical for American homes to be rat-infested, one might reasonably wonder what caused the infestation that resulted in this tragedy.
I hope so. The child is small enough that any corrective surgery now will leave minimal scaring.
Way back yonder while I was in high school, I happened to see a painting of a baby lying face down in a crib, its arm extended through the bars of the crib (this was before bumper pads) and its hand missing with blood dripping from the stump. (It was an amateur sentivity-raising painting.)In the background was a large rat. I have never been able to get that image out of my head and this just brings it back vividly, only worse. I've never even seen a sewer rat in real life. This is the stuff of nightmares. Should the parents have known rats were around?
The city caused it?
I find it hard to believe that the baby wasn't screaming in pain as the rat attacked her.
I think the parents should have been aware of the infestation, rat's don't typically eat people out of the blue to the best of my knowledge, but that does nothing to help the child afterward.
They are unable to put out trash without government granted trash cans/trash bags and wait for City Sanitation to come through neighborhoods 6 months after an ice storm to pick up guttering strewn all over their lawns.
I can state this from first hand knowledge as I live 5 minutes from the State Line between MO and KS. When it snows, KS salts/sands and plows their streets. Driving east into MO the story is entirely different, they wait for a thaw to melt the snow telling everyone that "their salt/sand supplies were in limited supply based upon unusually heavy snows, etc." What makes it even tougher to take, the City of Kansas City, MO has an "earnings tax" that they put on everyone who works in the city "to cover the maintenance of city services" necessary for the extra citizens' needs.
Yes, this is indeed a tragedy, but this story sounds like one that might have been written in the early 1900s, as though there are no advances in dealing with rodents roaming in neighborhoods. One just might expect this to happen in the summer when garbage is left lying around on city streets attracting rodents but we have had a particularly cold, snowy winter and many former slums of public housing have been torn down and new housing erected but unfortunately, the reason the former dwellings were in such a condition, was the results of the people living there.
Side note, I grew up in what is now some of the worst "inner city poverty area" and it breaks my heart to ever drive into the area where I used to live. We were a working class neighborhood, not at all wealthy but we mowed our own lawns, painted our own homes, picked up our own trash and exterminated any rodents found anywhere!!!
Where was the rat poison? Any WalMart sells it.
I'm lucky, in that I've never lived in a big city or one like this one.
"I find it hard to believe that the baby wasn't screaming in pain as the rat attacked her."
The baby was on a heart & lung monitor.
I presume (from experience) that the baby was premature and too weak to scream at any volume.
I would also presume that the parents were physically and mentally exhausted from caring for a premature infant (feedings every hour or so; depends) that you could shoot a gun off in the room and they would sleep through it.
Last winter we had a family of rats move into our basement.....Keep in mind that our finished basement is about 2000sq ft with numerous ducts, drop ceiling, conduit runs and hollow walls.
We had a terrible time getting rid of them. We first tried humane traps but quickly moved to poison and snap traps....They are incredibly bright animals for their size and it took us two weeks to get them all. We actually had them invade the main house from their basement "base" and leave their little droppings in the Kitchen and a chewed door edge in a failed attempt to get into the pantry.
You have to assume that they had full run of the house at that point while we were asleep. We had the kids close their doors at night to their rooms. Very Creepy....
Our home is in a very upscale area of North Atlanta, not the projects.
Rats will attack anything defenseless.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.