New York City Blues, East Side West Side Lose

A good breakfast for me is like a long shower when you really need one.  Just imagine if you couldn't take a shower to get off the days grime and stank.  You really get a mental rebirth of sorts.  Maybe it's all your pours being opened and refreshed.  Whatever it does scientifically, a shower most definitely helps mentally as well as physically.  And eggs, bacon and potatoes really prepare me for the day.  Anyone that gets both should be a very grateful person and try even harder to make a great day.

On a lesser day, tired, a bad dinner and a late night subway ride home due to rain; (writing this in June btw).  As I was coming up from the Lafayette G stop in a robotic line up the flights of stairs to the street with a dozen other phone zombies, I noticed a rat on the steps.  Most likely a tween, not quite full grown but not a baby.  I was about to step on it but then saw it last second and was able to jump and overt it.  It didn't move.  I had such a quick but disturbing reaction.  I barely saw that it had blood on it's little head, most likely injured and dazed.  I just fast tracked it a few steps away before trying to look back.  No one else saw it!  I ran ahead and actually asked the young girl in front of me, 'Didn't you see that rat on the steps?!' and of course she didn't hear me because as everyone else these days, she has headphones in both ears.  She didn't see it, she tells me quickly.  And said she was glad she didn't before returning the buds to her hear holes.
But I saw it.  And I didn't do anything to help it.  Rats in the subway are plentiful but usually they're not right at your foot.  This one was so adorable and in my memory now it was staring up at me as my cat does when she is looking for a good rub down.  Did I really see it's eyes looking at me or did I imagine?  It was most likely seriously hurt.  It was in the middle of the steps going outside but if it didn't make it, which it probably didn't, it was in a bad place for an injured rat to be.  I pass giant smashed rats every morning on the roads on my bike. It's pretty crazy how huge they get and it also surprises me how they can do so much but get run over by cars so often.  You'd think they're smart enough to feel the vibrations on the ground and get out of the way. 

And I'm disgusted now considering how mangled and horribly disfigured they can be on the road, I usually only wow at the size or how it looks like sick art.  I hardly ever felt any compassion. If these were cats or even squirrels it would be so different, but it isn't different.  These disease carrying nuisances are still living things that are on the earth with us.  Maybe this was one slight cog turn in the wheel of my own private evolution.  I have now included NY city rats in my circle of love.

This comes on the heels of trying to really get that we are all connected on this planet, all the living things.  So even the people we despise and know are doing horrible vile things, we must accept that they are part of us as well.  That no one living being is separate.  We have 97.5% shared working DNA with rats.

My bud says they're just doing their time, possibly from a previous bad life so acknowledge them but know that it's just a cycle.  It's a short life and they'll get theirs in the next round.  I like that too. Just acknowledge them but let nature take it's course.  It would make sense too that NYC would be overpopulated with rats if that were the case.

Check the crowd of German firefighters saving one dirty sewer rat in the video above.