and now a few words on rodents by P. Mahdavi

my friend Pedram relays to me the following story, which he has given me the right to publish, word for word:

Speaking of rodent stories, last night I was standing outside the Pacific Street subway entrance at the Atlantic-Pacific Street station. There is a crowd of people and all of a sudden I hear loud shrieking. Like blood curdling death screams. I turn around and see three girls running for their lives from a footlong rat that had emerged from the air vent. I say rat but it was likely the offspring of a mouse-bear mating experiment. The rat (really an ROUS) starts darting around as people scatter like syphilis was chasing them. It gets close to the wall and makes a run for the subway stairs.

Between the rat and the stairs is a guy begging for cash while sitting in his motorized wheelchair. The guy sees the rat galloping toward him and is about to jump out of the wheelchair. He lifts his legs (a possible miracle) and I don't know if he really can't walk or doesn't want to ruin his scam but he just sits there, clenches the armrests and crosses his legs. I've never seen such terror and helplessness in any person's face. I honestly hold my breath as I stand there watching the rat bull charge at the guy. The rat gets to him, the guy's eyes go from wide open to shut tight and the rat goes under the wheelchair/scooter and past the guy.

The rat is now ten feet away from the staircase, which has about 20 people on it, and is running at full speed. The rat gets to the first step and without hesitation it launches itself into the air like a bullet (I'm not even exaggerating), then does a flip (a F#%@ing FLIP!), clears the entire first flight of stairs (as people loose their minds), lands on the platform with full force, does a ninja roll (no joke... it did a precision ROLL), gets to its feet (winks at me) and jumps down the next five steps into the station.

The next 20 seconds I can't see anything but hear intermittent screams.

I love NYC. - Pedram Mahdavi