Ratty Bot May 2026

They were locked in a stalemate over the last sesame seed.

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

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. They were locked in a stalemate over the last sesame seed

On the third night, I woke up to find the bagel again. But this time, there were three rats. And they weren't fighting Goose. In 2023, a sanitation worker in New York

Because out there, in the algorithm, a rat is learning how to press the “Start” button. And when it does, we’re just the debris.

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

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.