So, something HORRIFYING has happened to me. I saw my first New York City rat. I was walking home from the gym, carrying two bags of groceries, completely minding my own business when this rat accosted me. Well, it didn’t exactly accost me, but it scurried along the opposite side of the sidewalk near a pile of garbage.
I was aghast. I knew other people in NY had come across rats, but I never thought it would happen to me. I let out a shriek, “Ooooh, No! Yuck!! Get away from me!!”
Two men on the sidewalk walking by me jumped back.
The rat, for his part, wasn’t scared. I didn’t hear him shriek at all. But he did scoot over a bit closer to his side of the sidewalk to avoid me. Seeing how intelligent and aware the rat was freaked me out even more. If he wanted to, he and a bunch of his buddies could kill me.
When I think of rats, I think of passage in the George Orwell book, 1984, where the protagonist is trapped in a prison cell, and his captors strap a wire cage filled with rats around his head. Just as they’re about to open the cage for the rats to chew off his face, he shouts out, “Do it to Julia (his lover)! Don’t do it to me! Do it to her!!”
That scene sent chills down my spine—the rats around his head, his willingness to betray his young lover…. That’s how I feel. Betrayed! I just fell in love with New York City, and now this?!
I realize this sounds odd coming from a person like me—someone who has faced four-foot-long California rattlesnakes, swum in alligator- infested waters in Louisiana, walked along the marshlands in South Africa with wild hippos—the most dangerous animal on earth, and faced off with scary men on the streets in Istanbul, Turkey chasing me with knives.
I like to think of myself as brave, but this experience with the rat was unnerving. It sent me scurrying back to my apartment where I spent quite a long time cowering.
I had to wonder if this made me insane. So, I researched my mental health n on Youtube. It turns out rats and other parasites, with their Bubonic-plague, disease-spreading superpowers have killed more humans than all wars combined. I was right. I now felt completely rational in my irrationality.
So, what was I to do next? I researched the problem even further and found there is at least one rat per person—and probably more—in this great city. I end up going through all the stages of grief, starting with denial and ending with acceptance. Maybe this is a one-time thing. Maybe it wouldn’t happen again. But I knew that was a lie. So, I trie for acceptance. It’s not the rat’s fault he’s a rat. I mean, what else is he supposed to do. Maybe the problem wasn’t with the rat. Maybe the problem was with me.
I discovered online that there are so many rats in the city that they’re probably inside my walls right now. I huddled in my bed and considered the possibilities.
I remembered the time I took part in a séance with friends from Istanbul and talked to three spirits in one night. I felt creepy when I went home and undressed. Who could be watching me?
Were the rats—unseen and silent as ghosts in the walls—watching me, waiting for me to fall asleep and snatch up that loose grape I let roll underneath the oven? I leapt out of bed at 2 a.m. and did something I’ve never done before. I meticulously cleaned my entire kitchen.
There, I’m safe, I thought. But was I? I tried reasoning with myself, asking if it’s better to encounter another rat in the street or a mugger. Quite honestly, a rat still felt scarier.
I oscillated between acceptance and denial. Maybe it was best to go home and face the California mountain lions instead. Maybe I should try harder to see it from the rats’ point of view. They’re not such bad creatures. They mate, make friends, have social lives, have babies, nurture their babies, eat pizza. They’re just trying to get by like everyone else.
It was ridiculous to be this scared. I thought of my Jewish ancestors during WW II, hiding in underground sewers from the Nazis, trying to remain undetected. They had to live with the rats crawling all over them, and they couldn’t even scream for fear of being found out and ending up with an even worse fate.
Surely, if they could survive with the rats fighting them for scraps of bread, I could walk outside my New York City apartment on a bright, beautiful sunny day and grab a slice of pizza.
I went back and forth arguing with myself. But there was no reasoning with me. There was certainly no reasoning with the rats. I was getting hungry. I had cleaned out the apartment so thoroughly there was nothing left. So, I did the only thing I could do. I opened my front door and just like any other New York city rat would, I went out in search of something to eat