Inside NYC Mayor Eric Adams long hatred of rats: A pet named Mickey, boozy traps and his familys Alabama farm

Mayor Eric Adams has long been vocal about his hatred of rats — and it might have something to do with a childhood pet named “Mickey,” The Post has learned.“I hate rats,” the mayor has variously declared literally dozens of times since taking office in 2022, including Wednesday when kicking off the inaugural National Urban Rat Summit.Adams’ summit — a two-day symposium of rodent experts hobnobbing over the best ways to mitigate infestations — is only the latest volley in the mayor’s reputed lifetime war against rats.The critters gnawed at him for years before the pesky federal investigations currently rattling his administration.The Post dug deep into Adams’ rat antipathy, exclusively speaking to his younger brother Bernard Adams about their ratty childhood home, trips to a pest-filled Alabama farm and the terrifying Mickey.“The rat we had as a pet I couldn’t even go near it,” Bernard Adams said of Mickey.Eric Adams hated rats as long as Bernard can remember.The brothers, along with four other siblings and their parents, grew up poor in Brooklyn and Queens homes infested with rodents, Bernard Adams said Wednesday.He recalled rats even jumping out of their bread box.“We grew up with all kinds of rodents, in our house, around our house,” he said.In the run-up to the 2021 mayoral election, Eric Adams recounted to The Post how his siblings adopted one rat, kept it in a box and called it Mickey, after Mickey Mouse.The pet rat Mickey story, which Adams has told to other outlets, was listed in a New York Times report about the mayor’s many potential tall tales.But Bernard Adams maintains Mickey was real, although he told The Post he was too terrified as a then-5-year-old to actually look at it.Sign up for our Metro Daily newsletter! Please provide a valid email address.

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