Rat on Subway Rider’s Face

Wake up, there’s a big subway rat crawling across your face!

The nightmarish video, originally uploaded to YouTube earlier this week, scurried around the Internet Thursday like a four-legged creature searching for a piece of dropped donut. It shows a subway passenger apparently asleep on a No. 4 train as a large rat crawls up his outstretched leg, over his coat and eventually onto his face. The snoozing passenger wakes up with a start and jerks his body to get away from the rodent, which leaps to the ground – ending the disturbing encounter.

The clip raises many questions, but none more urgent than the issue of frequency. Was this a freak occurrence or does this sort of thing – rats on commuters’ faces! – happen often?

We put that question to Charles Seaton, a spokesman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Happily, he said the agency knew of no reported complaints of underground vermin climbing on subway passengers. (And yes, Seaton was instantly familiar with the video in question.)

The MTA has a robust counter-rat strategy. “What we do on the subway is bait for rodents. We bait on the tracks,” Seaton explained. Rodent-resistant trash receptacles are also in use, and the platforms undergo regular power-washings to eliminate waste and grease, which Seaton noted are “attractive to rodents.”

But the subway rat phenomenon has a two-legged cause, he said: “Probably the big thing we try to do is convince our customers not to eat in the system. Because if there is no food, there are no rodents.” There are signs sprinkled throughout the system asking riders to avoid eating and to take all refuse off the train. The MTA is not contemplating an all-out food ban, Seaton said.

That left us with one more pressing question. Some viewers inside the newsroom have deemed the video a possible fake. Doesn’t that rat look a little to0 clean to be a native to the subway system? Could it have been a house pet brought in as a stunt rodent?

“I have no comment on that,” Seaton said, “but wild or tame we do not want rats on the subway.”

LOL he was like if he was waking up from a nightmare.

lol very funny video nice find ^^

WTF!!? People are just sittin' there chillin, RECORDING at that- while this thing scurries all up and down the train?!! :shudders: disgusting! And I totally agree, where there's food, there are bound to be little scavengers. Our busy metropolitan cities aren't exactly the cleanest, so it makes for a great breeding ground and buffet for those critters.

Another issue is that these 'wild' animals such as squirrels, birds, rats, and raccoons-whether it's in the city, country or suburbs, are being fed by people. They start to get used to human interaction and associate humans as having a source of food. They no longer act the way animals are supposed to act (getting scared and running away) or learn to search for their own food because they've grown accustom to being around humans who hand feed them.

Around my area, people leave food out for deer and sometimes raccoons. We get neighborhood newsletters that tell the community NOT to feed the wild because the raccoons started to hang round casually around the housing areas. We have a lot of bush and wild life that surrounds my area, yet people feel the need to leave food out for these animals. One of these days, someone's gonna get rabies from one of those things! Ewe!

TheBrightestGlow wrote:I swear I woke up like that after a couple rough nights out...

lmao! you woke up with something scurrying across yo' face?!