94 Year-Old Electronics Billionaire Accused of Hiring Goons to Infest Chicago With Huge Rat SwarmFuturism, describing how a Barre Seid's attempts to feed squirrels on a gargantuan scale have led to a plague of rats.
No one could have predicted this, except, or course for anyone with an even passing familiarity with rats and cityscape ecology.
A 94-year-old electronics mogul is in hot water with Chicago authorities, who claim that his hare-brained plan to feed hungry squirrels is instead sustaining a massive plague of rats.
As previous owner of the billion-dollar electrical manufacturing company Tripp Lite, businessman Barre Seid has been putting his largess to use by paying a small army of workers to sprinkle an assortment of tree nuts across Chicago-area parks, Fortune reports.
As local resident Caroline Novak told Chicago WGN, it’s “like a luxury mélange of really nice nuts: I’m talking Brazil nuts and walnuts… these are not acorns.”
Though Seid’s target audience seems to be local squirrels, residents and city officials note that rats have quickly grown to depend on the regular feedings. As Novak’s husband told WGN, he counted over 40 rats digging holes near nut piles during a recent walk through Lincoln Park.
The bizarre operation has evidently been underway for years at this point, earning the billionaire heaps of civil violations carrying relatively small fines. Wealthy as he is, Seid has reportedly had no problem paying those fees and carrying on — the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, as the old saying goes.
The local alderman is pushing for the parks department to sue Seid, which I think is the wrong tactic.
They should frog march him out of his mansion in handcuffs.
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