With officials making a concerted effort to combat the growing rat population in their filthy, disgusting city, The Onion asked New Yorkers to share their worst experiences with the grimy rodents, and this is what they said.
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“Once, I came back from vacation, and the rats in my apartment had changed the locks.”
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“Sometimes they’ll chew through my brake lines, and it’ll cause me to kill a few pedestrians. But other than that, I sorta like the little guys.”
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“I was at work, and this rat came out of nowhere and stole the evidence I was planting.”
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“A rat crawled inside my ear and ate my cerebral cortex, and now he’s in there’s making me tell you this.”
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“A rat ate my landlord and then doubled my rent.”
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“My pit bull was mauled by a rat.”
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“They stayed in a suite for a week, ordered about $250 of room service, and skipped out on the bill.”
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“There was this disgusting rat on the street, it looked really sick, and it was coming my way. I hate rats, so I ducked into the nearest building. That building? The World Trade Center. The day? 9/11. I barely made it out alive.”
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“They always eat all the trash before I can get to it.”
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“Pretty much all the rat places in Manhattan and even Williamsburg are overrated by this point. If you want real New York City rats, you gotta head to the Bronx.”
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“One ate my snake.”
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“I once saw a terrifying vision—a giant rat standing outside my headquarters, seemingly made of rubber, flopping around in the breeze. I can only assume the rats created it as some sort of cryptic warning.”
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“A rat hit a grand slam off of me in the 2020 playoffs. We lost that game, and I’ll never forgive myself.”
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“Don’t ask me that question here. It’s too dangerous.”
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“Gnawing through wires is my job.”
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“The last time I called an exterminator, he went into my basement, and six seconds later, all that was left of him was a skull sitting on top of a pile of bones.”
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“Visiting friends in Chicago.”
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“I lost a fight to one over a half-eaten burger in a dumpster.”
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“There’s one that’s been hanging on to my finger for two weeks now, and it won’t let go.”
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“There was this huge fucking rat masturbating on the 3 train just last week.”
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“I fell in love with a girl I met online. After texting every day for five months, she finally agrees to meet. I get all dressed up. I buy her $80 flowers. And what do I see when I finally arrive to her place? She’s a rat. A big gray rat with a Samsung Galaxy. I should have been suspicious when I saw her address was the sewers, but you know what they say, love will blind you.”
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“Once a rat family built its nest on my face, my own modeling career was pretty much over.”
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“A rat swam out of my toilet while I was in the shower and mocked my body hair.”
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“I was filming a rat skittering across the street, and, uh, it saw me, it really looked like it was making eye contact with me, and it seemed like, like it, um, wanted me to follow, so I-I did, and I followed it down this alley, and it climbed into this dumpster, and I opened the–the dumpster, and inside there was a little convention of rats. They were in little chairs with a tiny dais and someone–some rat–was giving a presentation, and it was, well, it was kind of boring, actually. They recognized that I was an interloper, so they didn’t want to, uh, share, maybe, or be themselves with someone watching, and it got me thinking about how we can’t always authentically be ourselves, even if we think we’re in the right place, because maybe, maybe there’s always someone who might be looking in, and making you feel self-conscious. And that made me feel really depressed, and whenever I looked at the footage, I got too sad, so I just couldn’t use it on my show.”
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“A rat crawled onto 4-year-old daughter, and she started screaming. Thankfully, my husband was there with a shoe to beat her to death.”
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