Dallas area rents are maybe 20% of those in NYC, plus you get more for your money. I’m sure we have rats somewhere, but they don’t jump into baby carriages.
Maybe some enterprising individual can invent a game and equipment for “Whack-a-Rat”. Rat jumps up, you clobber it with your Rat Slammer racket. Of course, there wouldn’t be so many rats if the lazy scum stratum of inhabitants would dispose of their garbage properly. But that’s beyond their ken, apparently. You should see the trash on the subway tracks. When I was taking a night class in Manhattan, I would amuse myself while waiting for the next train by counting the rodents scurrying along the tracks.