I’m a suburban girl. I’ve never actually lived in a “big city.” I just started working my first “big city” job a little over a year ago. It’s been a slight adjustment for me. I ride mass transit to work now, instead of driving. I see & hear things I’m not really accustomed to, such as the police handcuffing a guy on the sidewalk, or the great unwashed and unmedicated mumbling for spare change, or a guy in full pirate regalia walking down the sidewalk.
But yesterday, I knew I was finally initiated as a full-fledged member of the city workforce.
Walking to the bank to make the daily company deposit, I saw something furry and smashed on the side of the road. It was a dead rat.
I was reminded in a concrete way for the first time that rats exist outside of laboratories and pet stores. That it’s true that they live in cities, or anywhere with a substantial and concentrated human population.
Just had to tell someone, that’s all.
Maybe y’all want to share your story of stuff you’ve seen in the city that you’d never see in the 'burbs or rural areas.
The first time I saw a rat in public, I was in Chicago during my freshman year at IIT. I had taken a liking to walking underneath the El tracks as the trains rumbled over. One evening I saw what I thought was a really ugly cat in my path. Upon a closer look, it was in fact a HUMONGOUS RAT! I just turned around and walked the other way. Not going to go mano-a-rato w/ THAT thing!
Up there, in the right-hand corner where it says “Location:PDX Sex: Female” - that’s the airport code for the nearest international airport: Portland, OR. Plus my gender, in case anyone wasn’t sure.
Yeah, I know. Not exactly “big city” to many of y’all. Just as Reno, NV claims to be “The Biggest Little City in the World,” Portland (aka Stumptown, Bridgetown) has been referred to by some as “The Smallest Big City in the U.S.”
But, hey, I grew up in a small suburban town. We didn’t have gangs, prostitutes or nuthin’. You were a thousand times (at least) more likely to see a cow than a rat. And a million times more likely to see a huge cockroach! :eek:
Just wait until you see your first LIVE rat. Then you know you’re in a big city.
Mind you, if a rat is inside the building where you live, that’s too city even for me. All the rats I’ve ever seen, dead or alive, were outdoors. Most recently one scampered across a main campus walkway first thing in the morning, like a squirrel, only without the fluffy tail and with a furtive air (the campus squirrels are NEVER furtive, they’ll hop right up to you and vamp for handouts. That’s another thing I never saw till I came to the city.).
I didn’t see my first outside-of-the-petstore rat until I moved to the country. Years of boarding my horse had never exposed me to anythnig larger than a mouse, but I moved into a 150 year old farmhouse that hadn’t been occupied since the elderly owner died 2 years before. No rats at first, but that winter I had what I thought were squirrels in my attic. Then I saw one - no squirrel. Outlandishly large rat. Traps and finally poison put paid to them. This was last winter - fortunately I haven’t seen them since.