everybody wants to be a rat!

they're so cute, don't even lie

when i was about five and living in brooklyn, i remember staying at my babysitter juana’s house all the time. i remember losing one of my baby teeth in her bathroom, i remember eating white rice and ketchup with pan y mantequilla while watching the three stooges in her living room. i also remember going into her bathroom to take a whiz and seeing a rat the size of my five year old foot mid-crawl up the toilet that had drowned and died in the water. i still remember it’s little eyes, still open. i remember it’s little curled up feet and yellow teeth. rest in peace, lil bro.

rats are everywhere. this is new yawk! new york has a population of more than 2 million rats, specifically norwegian, or brown rats, as the majority, and i love every one of them. now does that mean i want these guys in my apartment? no. do i want them scuttling across my little feet when i’m on my way home at night and there’s no one around to protect me? no. but i do think they’re absolutely precious when i see them on the tracks, in the park, or having a little nibble of a cigarette. they’re so cute!! every day is rat day in new york. i love to see them werk it in the streets. they were here first, weren’t they? actually, they weren’t. they were here about 250+ years ago from england, but that was before the revolution. so technically, brown rats have been here since before we had the american flag. lin manuel should write a musical about that¹.

did you know there’s a genetic difference between uptown and downtown rats? apparently, manhattan rats are the closest genetically to british and french rats. now because they only really move a little throughout their little lives, they pretty much stick to the areas they know, which explains that dna difference. they’ve got little neighborhoods they stay in! they stick with what they know. they’ve got all their local spots. they’re no different than you and me! apparently, scientists can tell the difference between west and east side rats, and it’s not by income, i’ll tell you that.

this whole neighborhood specific hangout idea has got me thinking: if these guys aren’t going far, you must be seeing the same homies over and over again, right? have you ever heard the question “do you think you’ve seen the same bird twice?”? well, for rats, you absolutely have! probably the same three nuggets beeboppin around your apartment. to me, that’s really heartwarming².

we know this already, but rats are damn smart. rats can be trained to do tricks. they’re like little dogs! how can we possibly want to clear them all out knowing how capable they are? if they’re so smart, maybe they’re capable of revenge? they can repay favors, so maybe if we spare them they’ll do us some solids. rats doing us favors! i can see us turning that into rat slavery, so maybe not.

i know there are plenty of diseases that we can catch from those dudes, i mean, even their piss is poisonous! but i feel bad about all of these means to kill them! one time while walking through billyburg with marcos, we saw two rats just laying out on the sidewalk mid-kiss with death. these guys were breathing heavy, could hardly open their little eyes. it was heartbreaking!! do i get it? yes, there’s a lot of them and they’re gross and the more there are the more they take shit over. they’re eating trash, fucking up the city’s infrastructure, but it makes me sad!!! if they’re dying i don’t want to know that! that lil guy i saw was probably wheezing on that sidewalk. i couldn’t hear it, but i’m sure he was.

when i was about one years old in brooklyn with my mom, we had a bad rat/mouse problem. we were living on the second floor and the first floor had the bigger infestation, so our super thought it’d be a good idea to place poison blocks and traps throughout the entire building just to be safe. one day, when my mom was cooking and i was crawling around, i put an entire block of rat poison in my mouth and chewed on it. my mom had only taken her eyes off of me for a second! next thing we know we’re in the hospital, my mom’s having a panic attack, and i’m eating tar to neutralize the poison and getting my lil stomach pumped. none of this really has anything to do with rats directly, i just really wanted to tell that story. i could’ve died! i have no memory of this incident, but i think it makes me sympathize with them just a hair. sue me!

rats have a lot of haters. shit, in 2017 de blasio announced a $32 million dollar plan just to smoke these dudes. i mean, listen, i think the rats are doing a pretty good job of handling that themselves seeing as during peak covid time they were literally eating each other to survive. these guys were starving because the businesses they were relying on for food were closing so they had no choice! they’ve got an eye on the economy? crazy. they were probably lord of the fly-ing each other. they also jump pigeons? they’re capable of a lot. multi-talented. we love to see it! only eric adams doesn’t love to see it and so he hired a woman to handle it. kathleen corradi is the new rat czar who’s gonna wipe these lil guys clean out of new york and out of this plane of existence. will she take on a rat king head on? who knows! i’m sure she’ll do a great job, and that makes me even sadder. i don’t want to send the rats packing, or to rat heaven, but i also don’t want them near me. i want to know they’re doing okay while also never having to interact with them ever unless it’s to admire and romanticize them from afar. <3

rats, like cockroaches, were meant to live through anything. these motherfuckers can swim for days at a time and i can’t even make it through that little puddle of water at the base of the subway stairs because if a splash of that yucky water touches my skin i’ll have a fucking freakout. they’re stronger than me, and they’re definitely stronger than you. i feel bad for the buddies, but i don’t think they’ll die. only god can do that, and honestly, it doesn’t look like She’s been winning battle for a good long while. score one for the home team! slay!!!

i cited a lot of different articles, but initially read some articles on the cut that initially inspired this post.

this one, this one, and this one.

i love the cut!! *we’re manifesting here, help me out!*

xoxo

1. no he shouldn’t

2. i told marcos this same sentiment while writing this and he said “huh, that actually makes me feel better because it kind of feels like there’s less rats.” to which i said, “no, there’s still a lot of rats” to which he replied, after a small pause, “i love ratatouille”