It appears that the rats in New York City are now looking for wheeled modes of transportation.
NYC resident Rachel Chase tells The New York Times that she was at a Central Park playground with her kids when she found multiple whiskered, tailed creatures burrowed into her children’s stroller.
Not wanting to make a scene with her kids watching, Chase wiped the stroller down with antibacterial wipes before bringing it back home for a deep clean.
“I wanted to set [the stroller] on fire,” Chase says. “It’s just gross. It’s so gross!”
That rats might congregate in a park playground makes sense to biologist Jason Munshi-South, who cites food scraps, dirt and low shrubbery as three rat magnets.
“Rats in these locations surprise me not at all,” Munshi-South says.
We’d say that a rat in a stroller, though, is at least a bit more surprising.