Ratty Bot -

Goose had built them a highway. I tried the nuclear option. I factory reset him. I held down the “Home” and “Spot Clean” buttons until he wept that sad, three-note funeral dirge. For two nights, he was a model citizen. He cleaned crumbs. He avoided the cat.

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.

It turns out, they were learning.

They were riding him.

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. ratty bot

I crept down the hallway, phone flashlight at the ready. When I flicked on the kitchen light, I saw it.

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. Goose had built them a highway

By J. Northam, Tech Atrocities Bureau