"the risk to the public ... is probably slim to none.”

I really don't like that "probably" part.

The Star-Ledger is also investigating rumors that Snoop Doggy Dogg may have come into possession of some bubonic chronic.

Well if that was PETA, then at least they can do us a favour and die off, I can't stand hypocrytes tossing paint on furs while wearign leather shoes...

Someone's pet boa constrictor is going to be in for a tummy ache if they were stolen

I'm pretty sure that a good proportion of wild squirrels, including those in many public parks, carry bubonic plague, so it must not spread that easily to humans from rodents.

As I understand it, a few people each year in the US die of Bubonic Plague.
When my hubby was backpacking out West, he remembered seeing signs: "Rodents in this area are known to carry the Plague."

The problem is that if it is untreated and not contained, it can morph into the Pnuemonic Plague, which is spread through the air, rather than just through the rodent-flea-human channel.

Or so I understand, I don't do this for a living.

Five will get you ten that the damned things wind up on my commuter train.

When I saw the headline for this story, I was all "WTF?" Then I found out it happened in Jersey; more importantly, Newark. I relaxed. The guy's right. Those rats were hell safer locked inside than loose in that hellhole. There are cats roaming the streets, mutated from eating the indigenous rat population that has been eating toxic crap for generations, that are cockroach tough.