Could this be the OG rat czar?
A new sculpture purportedly dedicated to the man “responsible” for the Big Apple’s rat infestation popped up in Battery Park on Thursday, just miles away from where city leaders held their inaugural National Urban Rat Summit.
Hordes of tourists and other passersby quietly reflected at the rat-covered bust of Nathaniel Katz — but few knew the fictitious tribute was nothing more than a poke at Mayor Eric Adams’ storied hatred of the furry critters.
“Is that not real?” Maxine, who is visiting from the UK, said when The Post explained it was just a gag.
“You’re joking! I totally fell for it.”
The truth is: Katz never existed and, unfortunately, New York City’s rat plague can’t be so easily blamed on a single man.
The “Rat Man” is the sixth in the Urban Legends series dreamed up by Staten Island artist-prankster Joseph Reginella, who dedicates his lifelike pieces to New York City disasters that never actually occurred and forgotten figures who never really existed.
He’s the same man responsible for rumors that a herd of elephants once stampeded across the Brooklyn Bridge and that a giant octopus once took the Staten Island Ferry captive.
Unlike the series’ predecessors, Katz’s imagined backstory is much more believable — dozens of real-life rats were scurrying around as Reginella erected the bronze bust at daybreak Thursday.
“Thousands of people come, take photographs. Ninety percent of them believe it, they go on social media, they tell their friends this wild tale and then they’ll Google it and find out it’s fake,” the artist, 53, told The Post.
Katz was supposedly a failed circus performer from 18th-century Europe who tried to create a new legacy for himself by introducing a new pet to the colonies — a plan that quickly went awry as the rats took over New York and then the continent.
For his folly, Katz was catapulted into the Hudson River by decree of Gov. DeWitt Clinton (who was actually a real person).
The tall tale goes that the rat rampage exploded so severely that it directly caused the very real two-day rat summit hosted by Adams in the Meatpacking District starting Wednesday, in which health officials from Boston, Chicago and Seattle helped brainstorm rodent deterrent strategies.
The “guerrilla-style piece” debut for the summit is no coincidence, and Adams’ emphatic disdain for the city’s rat rampage heavily inspired the piece. The embattled mayor on Wednesday even proudly declared the vermin New York City’s “public enemy No. 1.”
“I hate rats too! The whole city’s experiencing rats,” said Reginella, previously dubbed “the Banksy of Monuments” by the New York Times.
Adams doesn’t get all the credit, however. Reginella’s own neighbor, who donated his likeness to the bust of Katz, first planted the seeds — literally and figuratively.
“He drives me insane because he throws birdseed and feeds pigeons and I’m like, ‘Can you please stop it because you’re really just attracting rats.’ I dubbed him the ‘Rat Man’ and that’s how the story came about,” Reginella said.
“Rats walk around in broad daylight brazenly … they’re nasty, man!”