A New York rat story.

I just had one of those crazy New York subway experiences that do so much to liven up life and this blog.

I was taking the Number One train downtown and, I suppose because it’s Easter week plus kids are off from school, New York is far more crowded than usual. You could push a hotdog with your nose from York Avenue to Broadway and still manage to beat the crosstown bus.

Somehow, I guess the aggressive New Yorker in me emerged in full fury, I found a seat and the second the train pulled out of the 79^th Street station, I felt something crawling up my leg. This crawling of course came a week after half of New York saw a You Tube video of a rat that had invaded a car on the A train.

I kicked my leg furiously, fully skeeved and checked under the seat, but there was nothing there. The well-dressed woman seated next to me said, “What was it.” I explained I thought it was one of New York’s furriest.

Then she told me a story about how a friend of hers announced the death of her pet rat on Facebook. Double-weird. 1) Having a pet rat in a city of millions. 2) Announcing any sort of a death on Facebook.

“Now,” she said, “here’s the really weird part. My friend’s daughter’s name is Leila and her rat was named Layla. So when I read on Facebook at Layla was dead and she was in mourning, I immediately was horrified. Her daughter dead at 20. God Forbid.

“I called her and she clarified that it was her pet rat Layla, not her daughter Leila who had passed.”

“Why would you name…”

She cut me off.

“Your darn-tooting. Why would you give your daughter and a rat essentially the same name?”

I was left to ponder that as she exited at Times’ Square.