City dwellers

Dear Congressman,

As part of my new routine since moving into your district, I take a stroll of approximately 8 blocks to 6th street in front of the Contemporary Arts Center to take the 2x bus to CVG. When I started this walk during the heat of the summer, I was making the trek in broad daylight. However, as summer has started moving toward fall, it is darker during the morning portion of the journey.

But with that said, I am pretty sure of what I saw the other day. It was actually the return leg of my journey, and due to work duties I was on a later bus, not arriving in Cincinnati until after 7:30 pm. It was still light out, but was slowly fading as the minutes passed.

I crossed through the northern parts of Cincinnati and made my way to Central Avenue, which runs north-south from the riverfront all the way up to the northern reaches of the city, about a 2-3 mile stretch. After passing ninth street, the brownstone style building of the city give way to a large parking lot and power relay station on the east side of the road and the historic smaller residential buildings of Betts-Longworth on the west.

Ahead, running from under the fence of the relay station and headed across Central to the residential area was a squirrel. However, I noticed that it ran like no squirrel I had ever seen, as it more trotted then the usually bouncing motion one expects to see from the numerous furry rodents that populate North America from coast to coast. I looked a little harder as it continued it's journey across the road and noticed it had a long snout and skinny black tail.

It was a rat. A very impressive rat.

Now, I have seen plenty of rats in my day, some socially of the human variety, and others of the same genre of this particular creature, but I have never seen a rat the size of a squirrel before. It crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into a crevice underneath a small apartment block near the intersection of Clark Street. I pretty much stopped in my tracks, wondering whether to take a detour around the area ahead or knock on every door of the apartment complex and let them know that the Godzilla-rat lives under their stairs.

I elected to just continue on my way, but with my situational awareness studies expanded from large groups of youths to singular incidents of large Rattus Norvegicus.