I’ve seen some pretty nasty stuff after riding Muni twice a day for almost two years, but what I saw a couple of days ago takes the cake.
A woman got on the 31 Balboa at Montgomery and Market with a small (about 10″ wide 5″ deep) tupperware FULL OF RATS! Not gerbils, not hamsters, but about 8 to 10 full sized rats! She looked like she might be homeless, so I doubt they were from PetSmart. I thought to myself “Shit, that’s pretty nasty, but at least she has a lid on the box”.
But then she proceeded to take the lid off and feed the rats small bits of carrots. They all started crawling all over each other, and the bus was quickly filled with the raw stank of rat pee. Afraid that we would hit a bump and she would drop the box, I quickly got off at the next stop.
Whether they involve animals or not, if you have a Muni or BART story to tell, send it our way.
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I see her at the corner of Montgomery and Market fairly often begging for change with her rats. I think that’s just her schtick.
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I’ve heard about the Tupperware rat lady, but haven’t seen her. However, the other day on the 49-Van Ness, I sat next to a woman with a rat under her blouse. Every so often, the rat would poke his head from his buxom home and solicit some soft petting by his master. I found the experience very unusual. I guess carrying a pocket-size creature is a good way to avoid Muni’s animal charge.
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This is one of those instances where I think I’d be the jerk telling the driver what’s going on and asking him/her to put this person off the bus… ew! Besides, pets are allowed on the bus per driver’s discretion… I would think most drivers would not want vermin on their buses…
Ew!
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Eek, that’s a bit too highly concentrated. Closely confined, homeless rats definitely do smell objectionable. But properly looked after, they are very tidy animals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywmf-A-RZ1w
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i see here multiple times a week near Market/Annie St./BART entrance. a month or so ago i noticed her begging at the escalator with a SINGLE rat, which was bad enough. now that she has a whole brood of them, i have to wonder what happened. was the original rat that she found/caught/bought(?) pregnant?
confession: i can get over rats as pets when the owner has a home to go to; when owned by a homeless person, though, this skeeves me out. why is that?
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I have a deathly phobia of rodents, especially rats, so this diary is making my hair stand up and my skin crawl!!!! Ew! I can’t even get over rats as pets. I was on Powell and Market and saw a panhandler with a cat and a huge white rat. I ran as fast as I could.
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This lady lives behind my office, and she walks by our window holding her pets up high as she talks to them. I hear her begging on the sidewalk that she needs money to feed her children. It’s cute, and they look like the pet store variety of rats, not the wild kind. As I’ve overheard her shouting in a raspy voice; “rats are cleaner than people!”
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I hope I’m not using that brand of Tupperware. It obviously isn’t as air tight as it should be.
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