A Rat Ran Over My Foot
Although this may sound like an opening sentence for a NYC based Dr. Seuss book, it is not. It is a true-crime story that I endured last week in Times Square.
There I was, minding my own business, hustling from one meeting to the next and cutting through Times Square, when I saw a bunch of people screaming and pointing. I’d like to tell you this is an unusual sight, but it just isn’t. I barely even looked. I thought it may be a famous person. I thought maybe someone had their purse snatched, or caught sight of a naked guy. Maybe a pantomime person posing as a statue had moved and spooked someone – all these things are common occurrences. Or maybe it was someone who got cut off by a car, a taxi, or a (worst of all) policeman.
It was none of these. As I bustled by, mostly minding my own business, I was forced to stop near the shrieking and pointing throng to wait for the light to change. Not that anyone minds the pedestrian signs in NYC, but everyone else was stopped. Then, just like that, the crowd parted, and a medium-sized rat leapt out of a planter, zig-zagged through the onlookers, ran over my foot, and dive-bombed under the nearest taxi. It all happened in a second, but it was very exciting.
The crowd, it turned out, was a bunch of tourists who (apparently) had never seen a rat. Now, I’m not going to say I’m fond of them, or even tolerant, but there is something important about keeping your cool when you’re in Times Square, especially if a rat appears and super especially if there are tourists around. To freak out and scream simply isn’t done.
And so, to prove how very cool I was, I shrugged, looked both ways and crossed the street, leaving the rat and its admirers to do what they needed to do.
Speaking of rats, when I was leaving for Athens last October, I parked my car in a hotel lot in Queens to take a shuttle to JFK. I had to be there at 4 am, and had to wait until about 4:30 am to catch the shuttle. Standing there, in the cool, pre-dawn night, I started to notice big loaves of bread moving surreptitiously along the street. When I’d actually look straight at them, they’d stop. But then…they’d started moving again.
It was only as they neared me that I realized these loaves were actually BIG f-ing rats – like king-sized rats. They were all over the place, in and out of garbage, under cars, sneaking through fences and rotten piles of junk. I will admit, those bad boys freaked me out more than just a little, and sent me scuttling inside where they couldn’t get in. So much for cool!
