A Man Fell Into A Hole Full Of Rats And Opened Up A Can Of Worms5 min read
Reading Time: 4 minutesDo you squeal when you see a little mouse?
But, have you ever seen a full-grown rat?
Owliver’s Obscure Observation: Rats are almost double the size of mice! And, their teeth never stop growing! They have to keep chewing hard objects to chip off their teeth and make sure that they don’t grow too long.
An odd day in New York City
Well, here is a story that’ll make you squealers squeal your pants off. Leonard Shoulders, 33, a man from New York, was waiting for a bus on the sidewalk when suddenly he couldn’t feel the sidewalk beneath his feet. A big hole opened into the sidewalk, and whoop! Shoulders fell in feet first!
In seconds, Shoulders was sucked down ten feet and painfully fell into a dark basement. But soon he realized that his troubles were far from over. Inside the basement, he was surrounded by hundreds of rats that instantly started crawling all over shoulders. He couldn’t scream for help as he had to keep his mouth tightly shut to avoid them from going in. It took the New York City fire department 30 minutes to bring Shoulders back up to safety! He is currently recovering in a New York Hospital.
“As he was falling, he scraped his face, broke his arm and broke his leg,” his brother, Greg White, 22, told The News on Monday. “He couldn’t move, and the rats were crawling all over him. He didn’t scream, because he didn’t want the rats going into his mouth.”
-New York Daily News
A New York City problem!
According to the New York City Department of Buildings, this specific section of the sidewalk needed repairs. Moreover, the sidewalk runs over the rat infested basement of a building near the road. For now, this sidewalk has been closed for re-construction. The ratty building nearby has also been evacuated for some much-needed fixes and rat extermination. But, New York City has a well-known and enormous rat problem. In fact, their city Mayor has dedicated millions of dollars to exterminate or kill these rats that fill the basements and sewers in the city.
No matter how grossed out you are by rats, you have to admit killing so many of them is saddening. It would be great if we could just live with these creatures, like we do with dogs or dragonflies but unfortunately rats nibble away at our food and carry deadly diseases. In fact, rats caused the worlds’ most deadly pandemic known as the black death that killed upto 200 million people in Europe!
<<Image Source: Business Insider
There is no safe or kind way to get rid of rats once they enter a building or infest your home. Even though there are a range of measures to trap them and set them free later, once they come to cities in large numbers, there is almost no choice but to exterminate them. However, when rats live away from human settlement, they are not a threat to human and are essential to our planet’s biodiversity. Preventing rats from settling down in cities by maintaining proper hygiene is far less cruel to both the cute scurrying rats and the public!
Owliver’s Obscure Observation: “Rats can hear well, including sounds that are too high-pitched for humans to hear. They may also ‘smile’ with their ears! When they’re happy their ears relax, become droopy and slightly pinker. Aww!“-National Geographic Kids
Think with Owliver:
Is there a way to safely get these cute little rodents out of our cities?
With Excerpts From: The Guardian, New York Daily News, National Geographic Kids, HumaneSociety, Wikipedia.
What do you think of rats? Let us know in the comments below.
