One morning in mid-February, on my way to work on a crowded F train, I started to doze as I read my book. Suddenly I was awakened by a woman’s voice loudly noting the presence of a rat in the train car.

Many shrieks and gasps and screams followed, and the car emptied by half when the doors opened at the next station. People at my end of the car stood and looked toward the other end, where the excitement had originated, and then the remaining passengers parted, as if Moses were walking through the car, to allow the rat to run about in its terror.

As the excitement transferred to my end of the car, I heard the following exchange from the far end:

Woman No. 1: “What station was that? Forty-second Street? Oh, I missed my stop.”

Woman No. 2: “How could you miss your stop with a rat in the car? Don’t you want to get off the train?”

Everyone laughed, both at the comment and at the second round of shrieks and screams that accompanied the rat’s exit from the train at Rockefeller Center.