Rat Salad

One of the most infamous things about New York is the excessive dirt and filth that permeate the city. The horrible malodorous smells that make you want to forget about eating anything...ever, seem to be only a block away. With these sights, smells and sleaze inevitably comes the vermin that feed upon this filth. No I'm not talking about divorce lawyers - but actual vermin of the 4-legged variety. Rats.

Jon Franks, my friend whom I originally met in Washington, DC, had returned to live in his native New York state about a year after I had moved there. Jon's first roommate was a smooth-talking and at times charismatic guy by the name of Danny Eudell. Danny could be brash and obnoxious but he had a good heart and an off-beat sense of humour that I liked. One evening upon leaving Jon and Danny's apartment for a night of drinks and not talking to women, we passed the garbage bins that all residents of their building used for trash disposal. What always struck me as being odd about trash disposal in New York City was the fact that there were no back alleys and spaces away from sidewalks and streets where trash could be stored. As a result all trash was literally on the sidewalk in bins or storage areas adding to the stench of the city. As we passed the trash barrels in front of Jon and Danny's building Danny paused and said "Wait, you guys gotta see this," and he proceeded to lightly kick or shake one of the open trash barrels. Inside the barrel he had moved there seemed to be a lot of activity and commotion and soon a rat climbed out of one of the barrels and scurried away into the darkness. This lead rat, however was followed by another and then another and yet another rat until what seemed like an entire colony of rats which had been inhabiting this one standard-issue "roughneck" trash barrel seemingly disturbed of their "business", had spilled out into the night. With long thin short-haired bodies and quivering tails, the rats visible to me as only silhouettes, escaped from the trash barrel. Their slimy dirty bodies and the action of their emptying seemed to evoke a similar feeling of emptying in my self. A feeling that I could detect in the pit of my stomach that made me nauseous and threatened to expose itself as that evening's dinner on the sidewalk of 91st street.

Jon and I looked at this spectacle and grunted our disapproval. "Oh god, Danny" Jon said under his breath. Danny laughed knowing that the joke that nearly goes over the edge of acceptable is often the most funny and this joke was right on that edge.

"I did that last night too and like 15 rats came out of there", he explained. Jon, whose level of squeamishness was almost as bad as mine was speechless. I continued walking down the rest of 91st street in search of the cab we needed trying to forget the horrible spectacle I had just seen. Obviously I wasn't successful.