Rattus norvegicus.

I've been obsessed with rats lately. Their prevalence, both literally and figuratively, is too ubiquitous to ignore.

For an entire month now, I've been trudging through Camus' book 'The Plague'. It never takes a whole month to get through a piece of literature, but this is one heavy read and I refuse to turn my back on a book midway. I've made it through the rat deaths and onto the human deaths, meanwhile I've been purchasing new, more jovial reads in anticipation of completion. Although it's written with continuous strings of beautiful transitions, the basic premise is dangerous in the hands of an overactive imagination.

Each time I'm in the East Village I see copious numbers of rats. Last weekend I attended a Thanksgiving feast at a friend's warehouse in the Lower East Side and literally had to scatter the rats with my feet at the building's threshold.

Last weekend, my friend Andy who writes for the New York Times led me to a You Tube video of an event last summer at a fast food joint near my apartment where hundreds of rats were seen inside during off hours. He also forwarded an article about a group of people who have rat fetishes and think they positively communicate with the creatures.

Also last week, I was handed a 'rodent proof planting guideline' devised by the City of New York. I was instructed to become familiar with it as I proceed on various landscape projects around the island.

During one of my daily New York Times reads this week, I stumbled upon an article declaring there are 9 rats for every human in New York City.

Last night I had a showdown with a very large rat at my local subway exit. His/Her boldness in the face of my much larger stature was intimidating to the point of contemplating getting back on the train behind me.

This morning, I experienced complete rat meltdown during my morning leisurely jog when I spied this announcement on a restaurant door near my home:
















I hearby, for the first time in my life, quit a book before completion. That's it. I'm done. No more plague. Sorry Mr. Camus, but congratulations on your Nobel Prize.