A Brooklyn dog has taken the city’s rat problem into her own paws.
Luna, a 7-year-old, 31-pound Schnauzer-mix, has caught and killed more than 200 of the rodents since early 2023.
“She is like the Terminator,” said the dog’s owner, Zachary Henson, a 39-year-old cybersecurity engineer. “She just single-mindedly goes after them.”
Henson first discovered Luna’s rat-catching talents by accident when the dog spotted a rodent outside of a laundromat in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
“She immediately knew what to do,” he recalled. “She grabbed the rat and started shaking him.”
Initially, Henson was “grossed out” by the dog’s actions. But, “within an hour or two, I was like, ‘My dog killed a rat. That’s pretty awesome,’” he said.
Now, their regular evening walks around the Crown Heights neighborhood where they live are a hunt for rats amidst trash bags and cans. Several nights a week, Luna gets a kill
“She is very smart,” said Henson, himself a former Green Beret. “We have a little bit of a strategy. If there’s a row of trash cans, she’ll go to one end, then I’ll kick the other end and they’ll run [towards her].”
Luna has been so successful in her pursuits that, last month, councilman Chi Ossé gave the dog an honorary citation after Henson’s wife, Stephanie Russell-Kraft, informed the local pol of the dog’s good deeds. Crown Heights residents and shop owners have also informally expressed their gratitude to Luna.
The dog’s triumphs come as Mayor Adams struggles with a growing rat problem. In 2023, there were 41,748 rat and vermin complaints made to NYC’s 311 hotline, up nearly 8% from before he took office in 2022.
Last month, Adams was ticketed for a rat infestation at his own row house in Bedford-Stuyvestant, which is part of Brooklyn’s Rat Mitigation Zone (RMZ), an area designated by the city to have high rodent activity. It was Adam’s fifth violation since he became mayor.
Crown Heights, where Luna takes her nightly walks, is on the border of the RMZ.
Luna’s work does have its grim side, including the fact the pup doesn’t differentiate between squirrels and rats, so Henson has to strive to keep her from attacking the former.
As for the rat corpses, Henson picks them up with a plastic dog-poop bag and deposits them in the trash. On average, they’re about an inch shy of the length of his size 10.5 shoe. Russell-Kraft does not participate in Luna’s hunts.
While Henson initially had concerns about Luna potentially contracting disease from her ratty pursuits, he did some research and feels she is fairly safe. The dog kills the rodents by violently shaking them, so she’s not breaking their skin, and she’s vaccinated against Leptospirosis, an illness that is often spread via the urine of infected rats. After a catch, the pet gets her mouth washed out.
The couple adopted the pooch from Brooklyn’s In Our Hand’s Rescue in 2018. She’d been brought up from Florida and was terrified, undernourished and initially quite shy.
A DNA test revealed her to be 50% Schnauzer and 25% American bulldog. That tracks, as Schnauzers are in the terrier family, and terriers have long been known for their rat-catching prowess.
Despite her killer instincts, Henson claims Luna is a cuddly companion around the house who loves to sit on the couch and demands to be petted.
He said, “She’s a very, very sweet dog.”
