UPDATE: Our tipster writes back this morning:
The rat is gone! Perhaps a scheduled street clean but my guess is the credit goes to you. Chalk one up for Barista-Action!
Sure, we expect them on Manhattan subway tracks (and eek…even on the subway train), but a rat is pretty much the last thing you want to see (or for that matter, almost step on) on your morning commute in Montclair. You also don’t want to look in your email inbox and see a message entitled “The Rat of Watchung Plaza.” A tipster writes…
This dead little fellow has been gracing the curb across the street from the Watchung Avenue Station for about “two weeks” according to one of my fellow commuters.
I’ll leave the commentary to you. I find it all a bit sad. Not for the rat, but for Montclair.
This tipster (who sent a photo of a dead rat that was almost the size of a Belgian block of the curb it rested against) is not the first to send us stories of rats hanging around Watchung Plaza area; we’ve also heard from people in the north side of Glen Ridge seeing rats. Are you seeing any where you live? And if we can’t get rid of them, can we get them to pay taxes?
A few weeks ago, I saw a dead one at Edgemont Park.
Raeven: He ratted out the others.
RATatouille, anyone???
Martta: Is there no honor among rats these days?
Also, I’ve been trying to block it out, but I did recently see a live one running around the Watchung vicinity.
I prefer the inflatable kind.
Come to NYC in the summer…it’s practically a daily occurrence in the subway stations.
The town does need to increase its Rat-ables.
Not surprising, between the brook nearby, the trash cans, and the dumpsters. I’ve noticed the large poison bait traps by the soccer domain, and other places. My son saw one in the subway, and to the amusement of the crowded platform pointed out the “squirrel” on the tracks.
Raeven…It could have been a muskrat.
I’m waiting for Mathilda to come out in favor of rats; till then, I have to say I’ve seen them on and off in my neighborhood for a couple of decades. I stupidly had an open compost heap which they frequented. One intrepid little guy with a snub (not pointy!) nose and bright (not beady!) eyes, waiting for me to go back inside so he could resume scavenging. I enclosed the compost, and haven’t seen one since. But I think they’ve been here before my neighborhood was developed. As long as they don’t come inside, I’m ok with them. But I did briefly live in a tenement in Philadelphia with rats, and it was scary. They moved furniture — knocked over lamps. They left Good & Plenty sized turds on pillows. I would never want to do that again.
Kit, they moved furniture? Were they into feng shui?
Oh yeah, I stepped over that little bugger yesterday. Didn’t even occur to me to take out the iPhone and snap a picture. (Thank you, Baristas, for not posting it.) I think he might have died of old age waiting in the crosswalk for the cars to stop for him.
By the way, there must be a quarter million rats living between Watchung Plaza and Edgemont Park.
I stepped on a dead rat in NYC. Some co-workets and I were leaving a bar, it was dark and I didn’t see it. I think they almost laughed themselves to death when they saw my reaction to the sensation of dead rat meat under foot. God, it was a truly horrid.
Once I was walking down Park Ave past some fancy apartment building and out of the corner of my eye I could see the doorman, all dressed in his hat and epaulettes, jumping out of the way apparently of some invisible object, and also some guy in a business suit and briefcase jump to one side. I stopped and looked and there came this big rat, running out from the lobby through the double doors, down in the middle of the red carpet, turning left and heading up the sidewalk as though it were late for an appointment.
Lucky you guys didn’t step on this one!
http://newsthreat.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/union-rat.jpg
Local birthers, looking for a new cause, blew up a digital photo of the dead rat to 30x actual size with the intention of proving that it was a fake corpse.
walleroo, your rat was clearly in the Rat Race…
Good one, Nellie. As am I.