Tall tails

I heard a statistic that there are 9 rats for every person in NYC. which would mean there are about 72 million nasty slimy hairy skinny tails running around here. I should have never thought about this, because I was living in a healthy state of denial. When I'm waiting for the subway, I play this little game in my head debating which is worse: NOT looking at the train tracks and not seeing the rats, and then one suddenly leaps out at me or scampers up out of the pit and runs across my toes... EEEEK! OR... is it worse to look down into the tracks, and SEE the nasty thing and watch it run along the rails... SICK! Sometimes, I see a tiny little field mouse, and it scares me at first, but I force myself to watch it and pretend it's Templeton from the Charlotte's Web book. Dan says, "awww... he's CUTE, Carm! Look at him, just playing and running." I can deal with it then, but one time, I saw a HUGE gargantuan beast of a rat, that looked more like a feline than a rodent. I couldn't look at it, even though Dan was laughing at it and trying to get me to watch. It's their tails, you know? If their tails were chopped off, then I think they'd look like gerbils or fast running rabbits or something. But I was torn, because I couldn't bear the thought of NOT looking, and then being surprised to see it come up and run up my skirt or something horrendous like that. I just shuddered as I was typing that... can you imagine?!! UURRRGGGHHHH!!!

Anyway, I haven't seen any rats other than a couple times down in the subway pits, and they're usually small and more like little mice. EXCEPT, last night Dan and I came up out of the subway station at 72nd street, at about 1 AM, and there was a DEAD RAT laying right at the entrance to the station!! It was GINORMOUS, and it was laying on it's back with it's feet sticking up in the air. It must have been poisoned and stumbled up onto the street. It was weird, cause it was grossing me out, but I couldn't look away! Dan almost tripped over it at first, because we weren't expecting it. That would've been so disgusting- kicking a dead rat in your flip flops?! OMG!