Rat

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

Residents in the 4500 block of G Street, armed with lawn chairs and placards, today protest an infestation of rats from the old Harrowgate incinerator on the 4700 block. Neighbors demanding a cleanup say people have been leaving waste outside the fence of the facility, which has been used recently only as a refuse transfer station.

One reason I tend to be optimistic to the point of idiocy is because I've noticed that nothing one learns ever goes to waste. For years, I thought the nadir of my formal education was an unhappy brush with experimental psychology in which I accidentally drove a rat nuts. I was attempting to fulfill a science requirement without having to take something serious, such as physics. They gave me a Skinner box and a nice little white rat. I was supposed to teach my rat he had to press the bar in the Skinner box to get a food pellet; he learned in no time flat.

Mobster Lawrence Merlino was slipped into a judge's anteroom yesterday to plead guilty to third-degree murder in the 1985 murder of Frank "Frankie Flowers" D'Alfonso, the Daily News has learned. Merlino is said to have agreed to testify for the prosecution in the retrial of imprisoned crime boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo and six others in the D'Alfonso hit. "If it is true that Merlino pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony, then there is no pride" in the district attorney's office, said Scarfo's lawyer Norris E. Gelman.

Haywood Fennell has spent 25 years in prison because he has refused to violate the inmates' code against ratting on a pal, the prosecutor said. Yesterday, Fennell, now 43, continued his devotion to the code by refusing to testify against Stephen Watkins, 44, whom he originally implicated in a statement to police in the stabbing death of Joseph Hayes, 42, during a 1968 robbery. The district attorney's office brought Watkins to trial because Fennell had said he was ready to testify.

The president of a Philadelphia company that supplies food to school cafeterias said yesterday that it was "purely accidental" that a rat choked to death on a cracker supplied by his firm. In an experiment similar to those performed often in other schools, sixth graders at Harrison Elementary School recently fed one rat junk food and another food from the school cafeteria to observe the effects of the different diets. On Thursday the rat eating the cafeteria food died. "In all these years of providing this program at no extra cost to school systems, we have never lost a rat," said Richard Levin, president of Blue Ribbon Services, which has sponsored similar experiments at Harrison and other schools over the last three years.

Just when we thought a few areas of natural law were settled, along comes the case of the fellow in Hillside, N.J., who has been charged with unlawfully (and unceremoniously) executing a rat in his garden. This is not so much a matter of due process: The rat was railroaded, no question. No, the charges involve the method of execution: The rat was thwacked to death with a common broom handle. (Admittedly, cruel. But in the history of rat oppression, hardly unusual.) The accused - a small-time tomato gardener named Frank Balun, 69 - doesn't deny the hit. In fact, it was he who called the American Humane Society in the first place, having trapped the rat in a squirrel cage upon discovering him nibbling the tomato plants.

Greg Huttie knew last year would be difficult to top. In 1987, Huttie's team, the Rathskellar, dominated the West Chester Adult Baseball League like no team had for five years. The Rat became the first team since Englund's in 1982 to win the regular-season race, the playoff championship and the Fourth of July Tournament. This year, the Rat is in the hole. Norristown captured the annual Fourth of July Tournament, defeating the defending champs in the final game, 6-3, last Sunday afternoon at Hoopes Park.

While predicting that trash accumulating from the municipal workers' strike will likely turn out to be more of a nuisance than a health hazard, experts say that rat bites and bacterial infections could result because of the mounting garbage, particularly at the temporary dump sites. The garbage, rotting in 90-degree-plus weather, not only will attract rats, but also flies and other insects, stray dogs and possibly raccoons, experts say. "The garbage that is sitting out is a food supply for bacteria and animals and insects," said Stanley Mayers, a professor in public health at the Pennsylvania State University.

A trip to a variety store resulted in post traumatic stress disorder for a Delaware County man who says he was shopping for a ribbon when he was attacked by a rat. In a suit filed this week in Philadelphia, Bernard King, of Sharon Hill, said he suffered "mental anxiety and anguish and severe shock to his entire nervous system" following a Mar. 23 visit to the Dollar Tree at the Penrose Plaza in Southwest Philadelphia. King, a 50-year-old roofer, needed a ribbon to wrap a birthday present for his daughter, his attorney said.

SHELDON ADELSON. Foster Friess. Frank VanderSloot - these days, every presidential candidate has a billionaire (or two), and these are the most prominent of the rich guys currently exercising unprecedented influence over the American electoral system. As predicted, corporate contributions are dominating politics ever since Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 allowed them to spend unlimited sums of money on Political Action Committees - just so long as the committees don't "coordinate" with individual candidates.

Police found a 3-year-old boy and his 1-year-old brother alone in a squalid, rat-infested South Philadelphia apartment early today after their mother was arrested blocks away during a car stop, police said. The children, who were unharmed, have been placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services, police said. Their 31-year-old mother, Dawn Canterbury, was charged with narcotics violations and two counts each of endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering another person.

WHEN HER teenage son caught her having sex with his 15-year-old friend and the son reported the incident to school officials, Terri Mezzatesta came up with a wild story, police said. Mezzatesta, who is 5 feet 9 and 260 pounds, claimed that she was passed out drunk and unaware that the 15-year-old was having sex with her, police said. But cops didn't buy it because, according to her 14-year-old son - who'd allegedly heard his mother say, "Right there, baby" during the act - it was consensual.

COLONIE, N.Y. - A burly, incoherent 32-year-old man who rampaged through an upstate New York gym died yesterday after going into cardiac arrest when he was repeatedly shocked with stun guns during a struggle with three cops, police said. Colonie Police Chief Steven Heider said Chad Brothers of Troy had gone to the Gold's Gym in this Albany suburb just before 6 a.m. and was described by witnesses as "annoying" and in a "highly escalated mood. " "He was mumbling things," Heider said.

Five years old when the dictator took over in a coup - curfew shut our city down Bloodless coup, they said - The many who thought this could be good. The dictator, a young man, a shy recluse assumed the helm, bent in piety, the dead sun of megalomania hidden in his eyes. Could not go to the store to buy bread or newspaper, could not leave home, visit friends, the radio thundering hatred, retching bloodcurdling song - Signs that went unread Factories built and filched, houses stolen, newspapers shut down, decades of people killed, 42 years.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. - A ranking Hells Angels member in western Massachusetts and two acquaintances charged in a triple murder killed one of the victims to prevent him from testifying in a kidnapping trial and killed the other two men to eliminate witnesses, according to a police report released yesterday. The probable-cause report by Massachusetts State Police describes how Adam Lee Hall, 34, the reputed sergeant at arms of the Berkshire County chapter of the Hells Angels, allegedly was involved in a dispute over a carburetor in 2009 that escalated into a series of criminal acts that ended with the killings of the three men. Their bodies were found buried in an undisclosed location in the county on Saturday.

RALPH NATALE has always been a talker. In 1994, after doing 15 years in prison on drug-dealing and arson charges, he talked himself into bed with a hot blonde half his age - his daughter's best friend - with empty promises of a better life and a yarn about his 62-year-old wife's ailing health. While he was boss of the Philadelphia mob, the FBI secretly recorded Natale talking about sketchy business deals, insubordinate underlings, a proposed Atlantic City strip club with "the finest broads" and his hatred for government informants who rat on fellow Mafia members.

Question: She got pregnant, we got engaged. I was resigned, if not thrilled. She subsequently miscarried and I saw no choice but to end our engagement. The day I did so was literally the last time she and I spoke, and it's been over a month now. I guess I'm just seeking validation that what I did wasn't inherently wrong or evil. Answer: No one's going to give you a medal. But of your two choices - break up or remain engaged to someone you didn't want to marry - breaking up was the only one that held any promise of happiness for both of you in the long term, even though it meant telling someone who was already grieving, "Oh, and I also don't love you. " So there's validation for you in that.

"Glee" star Matthew Morrison (left) told Billy Bush that he recently had the "worst night ever" when he returned home to find rodent feces all over his floor and a large rat chillin' in his bed. Matthew said a chase ensued, and eventually he caught the rat and threw him in a "far away trashcan. " Not creepy enough? Matthew said he went to bed after that - slept in the same bed where he just caught the rat. Dude, please say you changed the sheets. Later, "I get up, run over and turn the light on," he added, "and this big guy is on my nightstand and he jumps on my bed. And he's looking at me like, 'What are you doing on my bed?