Unlucky sleeping commuter becomes playground for subway rat: video

NY Post ^ | February 8, 2023 | Olivia Land

[BenLurkin]

The 20-second footage shows the unidentified straphanger dressed in gray jeans and blue vest being rocked to sleep by the train car. Unbeknownst to him, a mangy rat seizes that moment to race up his leg and onto his shoulders.

The rodent-ridden rider then wakes up and puts his hand behind his neck– only to find the rat making its way back down his arm.

The spine-tingling video is just the latest in New York City’s ongoing battle against vermin.

According to one recent report, maintenance crews in Battery Park City have even resorted to using dry ice to kill the invasive rodents.

“Here in Battery Park City, we’re no stranger to having rodents, and so we wanted to make sure that we were able to manage them while keeping everything chemical-free,”

[Bob434]

[[At least it wasn’t spiders, that would have totally freaked me out.]]

Had a brown grey fishing spider actually wake me up from the noise of running across a poster in my room back and forth- these spiders are like tarantulas, and they carry their egg sacks with them- and are super fast- took me awhile to liberate the room from the creature- they are so big that they actually fish for, and eat small fish- our house was plagued with them as we were close to a stream

[Bob434]

bed bugs are easy to get rid of- just burn the house down- problem solved

[Billthedrill]

He was just after a slice of pizza.

[proxy_user]

Nothing new:

“You got rats on the West Side
Bed bugs uptown,
What a mess this town’s in tatters, I’ve been shattered
My brain’s been battered, splattered all over Manhattan....

[woodbutcher1963]

The summer of 1985 I worked in downtown Buffalo right on the river next to the General Mills plant where they make Cheerios. Every time they burned/overcooked a batch of Cheerios they came out a conveyor belt to a big pile outside the plant. At night the rats came out. Biggest Cheerios fed rats I have ever seen.

[BradyLS]

Pizza makes you big and strong!

[Alas Babylon!]

Video (Not for the squeamish):

Get RID OF RATS QUICKLY...boots vs rats

Or...

Use a small dog. They weren't actually bred to sit on your lap, but to KILL rats!!

333 rats destroyed ratting with terriers

[HerrBlucher]

a fish eating spider is just as bad as a bird eating praying Mantis

[HerrBlucher]

a fish eating spider is just as bad as a bird eating praying Mantis

[Bob434]

wow- didnt know they took prey that large- imagine preying mantis’ about 6 feet tall- they woudl be quite formidable

[Karma_Sherab]

At least it wasn’t spiders, that would have totally freaked me out.

I returned from a trip one time, got into my car with my white polo shirt on, turned it on and when the air kicked in, about a thousand baby spiders were blown out and on to my shirt

Luckily, this being Florida, the car's temp had killed them all first

[madison10]

Yuck!

My husband knew someone who worked in a bread factory. At night some employees would come into the factory with guns for target practice on the rats.

[Clay Moore]

I remember sitting in a bow stand looking down at a squirrel thinking “that thing is about to go inside my pant leg.” Yep. Their claws are quite sharp.

[rlmorel]

I don’t know if he was drunk or what, but if I had been sleeping soundly enough to allow a rat to climb the length of my body to get to the back of my neck, I suspect that my reaction would have been quite different, involving rapid jerky motions of my body accompanied by shouted profanity.

As in “WTF? WTF? WTF?”, ending in a wild eyed stare around me.

I just don’t think I would have stood up and kind of shrugged it off.

[rlmorel]

LOL, I hear ya, brother...I hear ya!

[rlmorel]

LOL, Demolition Man, one of my all time favorite silly movies...it just came up in conversation today:

COMPU-CHAT: "You are an Incredibly Sensitive Man, Who Inspires Joy-Joy Feelings In All Those Around Him!"

[dfwgator]

Demolition Man is worth just for the Dennis Leary rant alone.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy5tI03OPdI

[rlmorel]

Heh, this would have been me.

I wrote this account a few years back:

---

Last night, as I was going to bed, I turned on the overhead light, pulled back the covers and was going arrange the pillows, when a big black stocky spider about an inch across scurried from under the covers towards the stacked pillows at the head of the bed and disappeared under them.

Now, I wasn’t making a sound, but when I saw that spider scurry and disappear to a certain unknown hideaway under my mattress, my mind was screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

See, if that spider makes it under the pillows to the edge of the mattress and disappears between it and the wall, well...it is lost to me.

I wouldn’t have been able to sleep in that room last night if a spider that big, that had been in my bed, simply disappeared into the room.

I could have gone on a Bug Hunt, but...that late at night, with a spider that big, athletic, and experienced, I was not going to find it.

In a flash, I knew my only chance was to hope the spider was motionless under the pillows, so in desperation, as my only option, I instantly grabbed all the pillows and flung them backwards towards the center of the bed hoping to drag the spider with them and expose it.

To my astonishment, the spider did appear, but to my deep horror, it made a beeline for the edge of the mattress where it could escape to safety.

All this, from the sighting of the spider to my flinging the pillows back could not have been more perhaps a second and a half. And here I was, seeing the spider fleeing along with any chance of my actually sleeping in the house last night.

With an audible groan, I watched the spider disappear over the edge, and knew with a terrible and absolute finality which was devoid of any second chance, that I had lost.

Then, unbelieveably, the spider reappeared, back up over the top, and ran directly across the mattress towards me.

Now, a normal person might think “What was under that mattress that made the spider flee back up onto the top and run directly at me?” or “What? It is attacking!”

But instead, my two thoughts were “I must eradicate that thing with predjudice!” (because I knew I would not get another chance) and “How can I kill a spider that big without squishing green, gooey spider guts all over my clean bedsheets?”

I calculated that swiping it at an oblique to lateral angle would launch it off the bed and onto the floor, where I had a chance to kill it if it were stunned or disoriented for even a second, so without even a split second of delay, I launched myself at it with my swooping cupped hand hopefully throwing it into the air against the wall, and not smearing it in a long, gooey greenish yellow streak with pieces of spider legs mixed in. Worse...smearing yellow spider guts on my hand.

In a flash, I visualized seeing the guts smeared on the heel of my hand, then with smoke streaming off into the air, the spider guts begin to eat through my flesh until it hits my fifth metacarpal, which slows the flesh melting process down temporarily. Kind of the like the Alien’s guts in the movie “Aliens” that eats through the steel deck of the spaceship.

But it didn’t and there that spider was, disoriented, but only for moment, then began stumbling madly back towards the bed to try to disappear under it. I slammed my hand to the floor in front of it, blocking its way, so at a full run, it changed direction. So I thrust my hand to the carpet in front of it, and again, it changed direction, still trying to reach the dark safety under the bed.

All the while (now it is probably only about five or six seconds since I first saw the creature) I am casting about for something-ANYTHING (except my bare hand) to crush the thing. I spied a decorative bowl next to the bed that was full of a jumble of Mah Jong tiles, so I grabbed on, and was finally able to flatten the damn thing.

Granted the innard-laden tile had to be thrown away in a secure trash receptacle along with more paper towel sections than were rationally necessary for removing the guts from the carpet, but...it was dead. I could put my head back on the pillow and sleep.

You can probably tell-I hate spiders!

---

Now. As you can see, that is how I know I understand that guy in the graphic at the top of this post. He doesn't want green and yellow spider guts from a big fat spider smeared in a streak across his white ceiling. So he set himself up for failure. I could have found anything to squish that spider, even a pillow would have possibly worked.

See, a normal person, seeing a spider on the ceiling, does what a normal person does. They grab a broom or flyswatter and smash the stupid thing, guts be damned.

[rlmorel]

Hahahaha...”Do it the “old fashioned” way? Exchange bodily fluids? Eeeeeeeew!”

[Mean Daddy]

At our acreage, I had so many hummingbirds they were going thru a gallon or two of nectar a day. One day I saw a hummingbird laying in a bush under one of my feeders. Took a closer look and a praying mantis had hold of it. Later I noticed a dozen or so of them hanging off my feeders just like your picture waiting to grab one. My feeders were hanging off wood planks and once I replaced them with metal holders, the mantis went away.