Just met a rat.

[hrmjustin]

I was sitting outside with a my beer and a man with his dog was about to pass by and i saw a rat flee for his life. He walked right up to me and i fled inside. We have spo many cats here I have not seen a rat in a long time. It was not a pleasant experience.

[applegrove]

1. Only rat I've ever seen is a pack rat. Looked more like a squirrel till I got close and it had

human hands.....

[hrmjustin]

3. This was a rat and scared the hell out of me.

had no shoes on at the time. I was MMB and the thing ran up to me.

[NYC_SKP]

2. I had a ground floor garden apartment on Sullivan Street off Bleeker, with a basement.

And I had rat traps. Huge rat traps. And they caught huge rats.

The biggest rats are bigger than the average cat, with shiny tales a foot long and more.

[hrmjustin]

5. Talk about a block to live on.

My church is on Hudson and barrow and it gets rats visitations all the time.

[bettyellen]

34. Oh do they still have the little thrift shop next door?

[NYC_SKP]

37. I live there for one year, was the super. One side was a "social club" and the other a vacant shop.

That vacant shop might have become the thrift shop you're thinking about.

Now there's a lot of shops, with a little vegan place and a smoke shop in what was my building.

I had to leave because the building owner was a psycho who actually become one of the Village Voice's ten worst landlords the following year and went to Rikers Island.

He had me cutting off tenants' water and power and I had to go to court as a witness and I was just too much.

The apartment, though, was awesome (as apartments in tenement buildings go).

[bettyellen]

38. NY landlord stories are insane- it's like a rite of passage. Glad you survived it!!

[NYC_SKP]

39. My very first task upon taking the job was to clean blood off the hallway walls.

Allegedly, the owner paid my predecessor, the superintendent, to beat a rent-striker badly enough to send to the hospital.

John, the tenant, was in a rent controlled unit and was a "troublemaker".

I had to mop up blood in his unit and then along the hallway walls and floors.

So, I was expected to be a pain in their asses, too, but was never asked to assault and batter anybody.

It all sounds like a dream now, but that's what a kid putting themselves through college needs to do.

I ended up moving to a place on East Houston at Avenue B, still withing walking distance to school but at $285/month, affordable.

Two burglaries and one mugging later, I left the city for Northern California.

I S-K-Ped, but will always love N-Y-C.

NYC_SKP

[bettyellen]

40. I was the only hold out living alone in an eight unit building, lucky he didn't torch me out

but he did make sure the locks were busted and all the homeless in town knew to spend the cold nights in my hallway.
Also, had the police come at all hours, ran the heat up to 90 degrees, then down to nothing, ugh.
Thanks god my current landlord is a decent man. No Cal is beautiful! Good for you!

[NYC_SKP]

41. Damn, you're a warrior!

And when the cops aren't helping you're left with the courts, and that can be even harder.

No heat is a death sentence. One year I had to buy heating oil for the Houston street building and withhold it from rent.

Fortunately the bill was a bit less than the rent or we'd all be peoplesickles!

[bettyellen]

43. I grew up Bronx tough, LOL. And had limited options. But other buildings were going up in blazes...

Eight or nine people had died just a block away. I ended up letting him relocate me to another falling apart building.
He stopped cashing our checks and sued for non payment of rent- we lost a bunch then. After my ceiling started to fall in, I decided to look for a better place. Lucked out. *renter for life!!*

[hrmjustin]

48. Yes we still have the thrift shop.

I have been a member of that church since 1996 and i have never been in the thrift shop.

[MrMickeysMom]

36. Jeebus...

That's big... That's scary!

[rug]

4. Did he nod?

[hrmjustin]

7. No he was fleeing from a dog that was following it.

[Archae]

6. I thought you were going to say you met our governor, WI's Scott Walker.

Then I realized that would be a vicious insult on rats.

[hrmjustin]

8. I would never insult rats that way.

[Locut0s]

9. I met a guy with a pet rat on his shoulder...

Cute little guy, though honestly not that little. Rats can make very good pets!

[hrmjustin]

10. I got 5 cats and it anin't gong to work out in the end.

[Locut0s]

11. It would work out for one of the cats ;) But not for the rat :P

[hrmjustin]

12. Lol my cats would be lying in wait.

The last mouse they saw they fought over and it got away.

[HarveyDarkey]

13. Wasn't named Ben, I hope

[hrmjustin]

14. No he was not as friendly.

[Rhiannon12866]

15. I used to have a pet rat, very cute, looked just like this:

[hrmjustin]

16. That is not what came to say hello to me.

[Rhiannon12866]

17. I imagine not, LOL, but I don't think he meant to get as close as he did.

My rat only got really excited about cheese.

[TheMadMonk]

22. Cheese is bad for rats. Not chocolate for cats bad, but bad enough. /nt

[Rhiannon12866]

23. Is it really?!

He didn't have it as a regular diet. I got rat pellets from the psych department and he did like some fruit and vegs. But I made it a point to go to school art openings (I was away at school), since they'd have wine and cheese and I'd snag some cheese for my rat.

He accidentally bit one of my classmates who stopped by. The idiot stuck his finger in the cage and Barnaby mistook it for cheese. I got a reputation at the school health center.

[TheMadMonk]

24. So I've been told. It may just be one of those too much of a good thing bad things.

Personally as a country boy, my experience with rats is more likely to involve a chunk of conveyor belt on an offcut of pitchfork handle, and peanut butter for the traps.

And dealing with the "green wobbly bit" my cat wouldn't eat squishing between my toes.


But, provided it's not being feral or invasive, I'm live and let live for all species.


As for fingers in cages. NO! Always no. Whole hand or nothing. A finger is just asking to be nipped.

[Rhiannon12866]

25. To be honest, it happened twice

And the other idiot was a good friend. That's how I got a reputation at the school health center. I couldn't believe anyone would be dumb enough to stick a finger in his cage. He was perfectly friendly, otherwise.

I just like animals, and I couldn't let my rat be "recycled." I had a mouse for a few years, too, was my companion in boarding (high) school. I couldn't bring my dog and I missed her terribly, so it was nice to have a pet.

[bettyellen]

35. they looove bacon and peanut butter- same as me.

[TheMadMonk]

46. Ditto. Saddly, too much of a good thing does NOT love me back.

A lot of bacon makes me queasy, and too much peanut anything makes me heave what feels like wet cement.

[truegrit44]

20. I had one just like that too

his name was Mr Magoo and he rode on my shoulder, really a fun pet.

[Rhiannon12866]

21. Sounds so cute! Mine was named Barnaby and I saved him when he was a lab rat.

He calmed right down after he came home with me and his only worrying trait was getting aggressive when cheese was being offered.

[olddots]

18. i don't care what anybody says

rats and bugs are fucking creepy .

[RebelOne]

26. I agree. I had an infestation of rats last year.

A field in back of my house was being cleared, and it drove the rats into my house. They were chewing on the electrical wires. It cost me over $1000 for an electrician to fix them. Then I immediately called an pest exterminator. Within a month's time, he killed 18 rats.

[RavensChick]

31. Thank you.

I was thinking the same thing. I even got creeped out when I saw "Ben" (that's how old I am).

Anyone who has a rat as a pet has some problems they need to address. Just sayin'.

[marzipanni]

19. Oh, rats!

We've had occasional small roof rats around here but as of the last couple of years it seems our neighbor's wonderful young cat has reduced their population to zero.

A little old neighborhood grocery store was torn down eighteen years ago and our neighbor across the street had a large rat relocate from the store crawl space, we surmised, to our neighbors' bathroom closet where she found it happily gnawing on a bar of Ivory soap. Her husband hit it with something the next time he saw it.

One time I was helping a friend of mine deliver his sculpture to the back door of a gallery in Boston at dusk. He said, "You probably don't want to get out of the car in the alley, rats might be running around."
If you park in a city alley, where garbage bins are usually kept, chances are you'll see a bit of scurrying going on. Not a place to wear sandals.

[ConcernedCanuk]

27. Another blast from the past!

.
.
.

Around 82 was living at an old farmhouse with my girlfriend at the time.

We used to take a pellet rifle and a CO2 pistol to the dump one mile behind the farm.

Scrounged through the dump for useful stuff, and shot the rats as we spotted them.

One night (bedroom was upstairs) suddenly woke up alone hearing "got you you little sucker!!" from downstairs.

Ran downstairs to see what what was going on . .

Sitting in one corner was my girlfriend with my CO2 pistol - and a dead rat in the other . . .

She hated rats!!

and for a pellet pistol at 30 feet - damm good shot!

I behaved.



CC

[RavensChick]

32. Good for her!

I hate rats with a passion!

True story: When I lived in DC the rat problem got so bad in my old neighborhood it was unbearable. Around the time I was in the process of selling my house, I had an appraisal and the report said that the roof was torn up by-you guessed it-rats! Needless to say i was not very happy and I ended up selling my house for less than I planned to.

So your girlfriend had good aim. I would have used a .22 myself. Same result-dead rat, happy life!

[lastlib]

28. I thought this was gonna be about an encounter with Dick Cheney.

(Sadly, he's not having to flee for his life.)

A truly just nation would be erecting statues to Edward Snowden, and Dick Cheney a fugitive from justice, begging for asylum from soulless tinhorn dictators like him.

[hrmjustin]

29. Great point!

[rrneck]

30. Have him evicted.

[EdwardSmith74]

33. The rat was more frightened than you were.

[ConcernedCanuk]

42. Oh - So you know this rat?

.
.
.

Most rats are not shy - they will literally chew your face off.

Must be a rat with a benevolent attitude.

That'd be different.

very.

CC

[Tuesday Afternoon]

45. heh

[EdwardSmith74]

47. Probably. I went to high school with a bunch of them.

[panader0]

44. Many years ago I flew into New Orleans from Belize

I went down to Bourbon Street about midnight to eat and drink. Walking around I realized I had to pee so I went down an alley and got behind a big dumpster. About fifty large Norwegian wharf rats ran out from underneath right past me. Scared the piss out of me.