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In This Issue

• The Monkey Election College
• The Goshen, CT County Fair
• Freak Babies: Gotta Catch 'Em All
• Interview with author Louis Silverstein
• Animals, Placentae and You
• Letters to the Feditor
• 114th Street Rat Rock Exploration
• Bodacious the Rebel Bull
• Fed Arts Review: Columbia Unbecoming
• Mary Had a Little Lamb... with Potatoes
• John Jay Pet Deathmatch
• A Letter to the Columbia Gospel Choir
• DARE: 8 Ways to Say No
• Ice Bitch Comic
• Guide to Naming Suburban Housing Developments
• THEY WATCH

Rats and beer. Yum.

Woah! A majestic rock!

Rat rock is serving 5 to 10 for public nuisance.

Rats. They're one of the many forms of wildlife associated with New York City, along with pigeons, squirrels, and those pesky sewer alligators. But for all the stories claiming that there's a 1:1 SUV-sized rat to person ratio in NYC, and that they lurk in every nook and cranny, I have yet to encounter one. Why haven't they scurried out of John Jay's kitchen? Why hasn't one popped up in the pile of dirty clothing in my closet? I know that cleanliness isn't the problem in a place where I can get a whiff of a sewer walking down Broadway. So, in an attempt to have a "real New York experience," I went in search of rats.

I had heard of a large chunk of Manhattan schist in the neighborhood called "Rat Rock." According to some Columbia grad's online magazine article, it "used to crawl with rats to the same densely terrifying extent that a half-consumed gobstopper will crawl with red ants." Perfect! So, one night, I ventured outside campus, armed with a digital camera, intending to capture pictures of my elusive prey.

Rat Rock is sandwiched between two apartment buildings on W. 114th Street. And it is indeed big. It's two stories high. Alas, I could only observe it from the outside, because it's blocked off by an iron fence and a locked gate. So, I stood there and waited for the rats. And waited. And waited. Nothing. Not even a squeak. Suddenly I saw something moving. It was big; it had a tail! It was a cat. I took its picture. The cat stared at me and looked pissed. My irrational fear of things that bite kicked in. I fled back to the safety of my dorm and I spent the rest of the night doing some fabulous non-threatening chemistry reading.

The next day, I was determined to get beyond that iron gate. For all I knew, there could be a colony around in the back. I canvassed the block, searching for alternate ways in. Over at 113th, I found a parking lot. The gate was open, so I walked in, and just beyond the corner, I spied the Rat Rock! Sadly, there was another fence to block my path, so it was still no dice.

I asked a guy getting out of his car what he knew about the giant rock. "There's a back alley you can go to if you ask over at 601 West 113th," he advised me.

Yes! I finally knew how to get inside! Thank you, kind stranger!

601 West 113th is an apartment building called "Forest Chambers." Typical for a Manhattan apartment to call itself "Forest Something-Or-Other" when the only remnant of nature around it is a giant, supposedly rat-infested, rock. Anyway, I walked through the lobby, breezing past a harmless looking security guard. No problem. I came to a door labeled "Basement Access", but was within sight of the guard, so I needed to find a more roundabout way. I took a flight upstairs, then rode the elevator to the basement level. Ha!

In the elevator, I noticed that "Columbia University" was engraved in the button panel. Of course, Columbia owns everything in this neighborhood; it probably owns the Rat Rock too.

Once in the basement level, I followed the exit signs that led outdoors. Right in front was the rest of the rock, just as big and imposing as its front face.

There were no rats.

There was beer. Kegs stacked three to six feet high against the rock-though probably empty, some still had their protective plastic caps...

But that's not the point. I had come to see a plague of rats the sight of which would induce heart attacks in geezers and scare off children, not a stockpile of unprotected and unopened kegs. I needed to figure out what happened to the rats.

They must have been inside the rock.

Think about it. If you're a rat on the surface of a giant rock, you're not living very comfortably. You're exposed to the elements. You're one of thousands fighting for space, continually battling to the death with friends and family, constantly on the alert for the cat that ate your brother. And then, there's that a never-ending supply of inbred cousins competing for limited resources. At some point, conditions are so unlivable that something has to be done. But what? Your community refuses to leave; everyone loves the location. So there's only one thing to do. Carve out a mini-NORAD.

Assuming that they've been gnawing away since the beginning of the '90s, the rats have thus far built a fifty-story complex, complete with thousands of bedrooms, spacious lounges, kitchens, love shacks, a direct tap into the plentiful beer kegs, and entrances manned by ferocious and rabies-infected guards, armed with rusty nails to poke enemies' eyes out.

So while the people of Morningside believe the rat scourge has finally been eliminated, the rats are in fact, still there: evading detection; expanding their city, growing stronger, larger, and smarter; waiting for the day when they can once again freely roam the streets without fear of extermination.

Until then, they'll drink some beer and screw themselves silly.