It’s early evening and Astor Place is thick with pedestrian traffic. I’m heading to a theater around the corner, and as I turn down Lafayette Street I see an enormous rat sprinting across the middle of the sidewalk. Though the rat is a good ten feet in front of me I stop dead in my tracks, as do several other pedestrians. A woman to my left cries out, several others gasp. A middle-aged man walking ahead of me doesn’t see the rat, but he has the misfortune of stepping into its path: the rat careens off the man’s shoe, causing him to stumble and nearly lose his balance. For a second he seems to sway, stunned by the collision; the rat too has been thrown off course, but quickly recovers and continues on its sprint. The man turns around, notices the onlookers, and says to no one in particular, ‘That was a big one!’