The subway is a magical place. Ok, I lied — but, much like the great outdoors, it’s a place where humans coexist with the wonderful creatures Mother Earth has to offer. Take, for instance, subway rats.
Just like us, they’re constantly on the go, scrambling to avoid the general population. And, unlike us, they’re smart enough to (hopefully) stay off overcrowded trains. They may not be the best commuting partners, but they’re arguably less of a nuisance than a lot of people you’ll meet below street level.
Not all of these rodents can be the famous pizza rat — who, if you recall, has tried on multiple occasions to transport a slice four times his size across tracks or down station stairs.
We coexist with them whether we like it or not, and Gothamist reported last week that a New Yorker actually kicked one of these subway rats when it tried climbing up escalator stairs at Grand Central Terminal.
The rat was going in the wrong direction and was extremely close to commuters — but did he get what he deserved?
Watch a New Yorker kick one of the city’s subway rats (hard)
In this video, the rat struggles to climb up an escalator that’s transporting New Yorkers down to the Grand Central Terminal subway.
Watch a number of people pass by — some unsettled, others unfazed — before one brave soul kicks the rat.
Not only did the rodent survive, but he headed for some sweets afterwards.
“After it was kicked it scurried toward the Magnolia Bakery line and people didn’t even notice,” Andrew Chen, who caught this on video, said.
Gothamist states that kicking subway rats is unkind. Apparently, though, it’s not so uncommon:
kicked a rat out of the area I wanted to wait for my subway, how’s your night going?
— Laura Gurfein (@LauraCGurf) June 16, 2018
I kicked a cockroach into a rat at a subway station by mistake
This was the most New York thing to happen to me today
— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) November 4, 2017
to the ten year old boy who just gleefully kicked a subway rat in front of a train- THAT RAT WAS TEN TIMES THE NEW YORKER YOU WILL EVER BE
— coby from work (@idiotcoby) November 18, 2017
Whatever your stance on the matter, the moral of the story is this: when life kicks you around, there’s always room for cupcakes.
