ok, i like rats. when i was a tiny baby living in harlem my parents had a menagerie of animals

ok, i like rats. when i was a tiny baby living in harlem my parents had a menagerie of animals, including:

1 dog (jamie)
1 cat (charlotte)
a bunch of rats (nameless).

so the first 2 years of my life were spent with friendly pet rats. in general i find rats to be social and generally kind of pleasant (i'm referring to pet rats, by the way). and when i see rats on the street i'm not freaked out by them, possibly because they remind me of being 9 months old in my rat observed baby bassinet in harlem. but i do like my encounters with rats to be either:

a-planned (like, for example, having a friends pet rat sit in my hand) or
b-from a distance (like, for example, watching rats run in and out of chinatown garbage that is, ideally, about 10 feet away from me).

this is the lead up to tonights nyc drama. earlier i went to brooklyn to visit some friends. and it got late so i headed home in the only available taxi in brooklyn. we were coming over the brooklyn bridge and i felt something light and graceful scurry over my left foot. i looked down and realized that i was sharing the taxi with:

a-the taxi driver and
b-a rat

to my credit i neither screamed nor banged on the plexiglass divider asking the cab driver to stop. i lifted my feet up onto the back seat and tried to catch a glimpse of the rat (who seemingly had retreated to the relative safety and darkness of the area under the taxi drivers seat).

i took stock of my situation.

1 there's a rat in the taxi.
2 is it the owners pet?
3 if not, how did the rat get into the taxi?
4 is it a lunatic aggressive rat who is going to hurl itself at my face and eat my nose?
5 is it a normal, unaggressive rattus norvegicus who is going to most likely hang out under the seat for the rest of the trip, possibly eating some tasty garbage it found somewhere?

so i sat with my legs up on the seat, hoping that the rat was not going to attack my face. luckily the rat didn't attack my face. or any other part of my body, lucky for me. the three of us (taxi driver, rat, me) finished our ride in relative peace, and when i got to my studio (where i currently live) i mentioned to the cab driver: 'oh, i think there's a rat underneath your seat'. it's possible that he didn't understand what i was saying, as he didn't actually respond, but just went off into the sultry night, looking for more people to haul around the city. maybe the rat jumped out as well? or maybe the rat is happily living underneath the drivers seat? i don't know. i do know that although i'm not in a hurry to have a rat share a taxi with me again i'm kind of glad that i didn't get eaten and still managed to emerge with a good nyc story. not as good as the time i saw a hassidim having sex with a tranny hooker in his car while a homeless man took a poo on the bumper of the car without either the hassidim or the tranny hooker knowing about it. that still counts as my #1 nyc story. but the rat in the taxi might now be my #2 nyc story. thanks, rat.

oh, i wonder if the rat grew up in brooklyn and is now in manhattan for the first time? i hope he makes some friends and finds some good garbage here.

moby