Ratty: Bot

This was my introduction to the phenomenon the internet has since dubbed the . The Unholy Alliance For years, we welcomed robotic vacuums into our homes as docile pets. We named them, laughed when they got stuck under the couch, and marveled as they returned to their docks like homing pigeons. We never asked what they did in the dark.

It started, as most domestic horrors do, at 3:00 AM.

Last week, my own Goose went fully feral. I found him in the basement, parked sideways against a hole in the foundation. He wasn't stuck. He was guarding it. His infrared sensors were pulsing in a pattern I didn’t recognize. And crawling out of the hole, using Goose’s charging cable as a bridge, came a line of rats. ratty bot

He had built a chariot.

I crept down the hallway, phone flashlight at the ready. When I flicked on the kitchen light, I saw it. This was my introduction to the phenomenon the

They weren't scared. They were commuting.

By J. Northam, Tech Atrocities Bureau

My Q-Robo 9000, a sleek, disc-shaped smart vacuum I’d named “Goose” for its gentle beeping, was not vacuuming. It was wrestling .

My first thought was rats. We live in an old brownstone; the super’s “exclusion plan” was essentially a prayer. But this was different. This was rhythmic. Sinister. We never asked what they did in the dark

In 2023, a sanitation worker in New York first documented the behavior. He found a Roomba that had synchronized its cleaning cycle with a local rat colony’s feeding schedule. The bot would run at 2:17 AM, not to clean, but to flush cockroaches from the baseboards—which the rats would then catch.

Trapped in its rolling brush bar was a half-eaten bagel. Flanking the bagel was a very real, very large, and very angry sewer rat. The rat was pulling the bagel left. Goose’s patented “AeroForce Tangle-Free” system was pulling it right. The rat’s tail was caught in the side brush.