You’ve never ridden a train until you’ve been on one in New York City. It’s sweltering hot. You can’t keep your balance because the train car jerks more violently than a bumper car. The man standing next to you can’t keep his hands to himself. You can’t quite identify that smell. You see mice run across someone’s foot. Your arm goes numb and there is nowhere else to hold on. And god-forbid you have an oversized bag with you and you need to get off the train in a hurry. You can’t scream “excuse me” loud enough for people to move. By the time you’re out of the station, you’ve absorbed the mixture of musk and stale perfume to your jacket… and your wallet is missing.
Just when you think you’ve seen the largest rat in the world scurry over your boot, something else catches your eye… and it’s bigger. Whether you’ve lived in the city a day, six years, or your whole life the curiosity is just too much. You go over and investigate. It’s bigger alright, and it’s got a tail! But maybe it’s one of those knitted animal book bags or hats, so you inch closer. It’s dark and under the seat so you bend down to see an opossum breathing at you. Now you’ve identified the smell, but are you happy about it? Was it a rat or did THAT thing really touch your shoe? Just when New York thought it had seen it all, it was the first recorded opossum to ride the D train from Coney Island to Manhattan.
It’s not uncommon to see an occasional raccoon or bird and it is certainly not uncommon to see a rat or two or ten.
General curator of the Bronx Zoo, Patrick Thomas, commented on this tumultuous occasion, “It might have been drawn to the train by heat, or the smell of food.”
In order to remove this wandering marsupial the entire train had to be evacuated and so ensued a 27 minute service delay. Police officers, who soon called for the aid of animal control, eventually shoed the disgruntled opossum from the train with much snarling and baring of teeth by the nomadic critter.
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This was adapted from the January 18th New York Times article entitled, "Seen It All On Subway? Look Under This Seat," by Michael M. Grynbaum.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/nyregion/in-brooklyn-suspicious-passenger-with-a-tail.html
http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=21k&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=984&bih=607&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsu&tbnid=nznQob-HhHl1ZM:&imgrefurl=http://gothamist.com/2012/01/18/and_heres_a_photo_of_an_opossum_rid.php&docid=zHTxNPFrWGyVRM&imgurl=http://gothamist.com/attachments/nyc_arts_john/011812possum1.jpg&w=319&h=360&ei=StcYT82aIqH20gGKqI3FCw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=565&vpy=42&dur=3718&hovh=239&hovw=211&tx=107&ty=129&sig=114352146926718411127&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=148&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0
ReplyDeletethere are times where our appreciation of nature is truly best left to the outside realm - posters, books, imaginations yes, but to find it nibbling at your feet, looking for a seat, or reading the subway map is a bit too much for me... i think ill stick with my taxis! :p
Ha! Looks like I'm not the first to comment, Sydney.
ReplyDeleteI like your use of direct address, of the second person point of view. However, it's a hard voice to sustain for a longtime and can disrupt the narration of the tale itself, because it eventually wants to slip into exposition, as it does once we get the Zoo worker being quoted. Still, I enjoyed it for this bit of flash nonfiction.