Th Rat Man

There are as many characters as there are square miles in New York and, most of the more bizarre ones seem to congregate in either Times Square or Central Park. There is the Naked Cowboy who sued the Naked Cowgirl for copyright infringement (yes, he has a legal copyright...). There are jugglers, musicians, card sharks, mimes, ice sculptors and, of course, the Rat Man. After a morning of meetings and prior to a late lunch, Bonnie and I took a stroll to see the renovated Boat House Tavern in the park and we, like it or not, saw the lovely rats.

The Rat Man is......well.....he is.....interesting, to be kind. He is a "performance artist" who uses the creatures for the amusement mostly of himself but observers actually throw money in a hat at his feet. Perhaps they like when the rats do the choo-choo train spin around his neck or eat a piece of cheese from his mouth. It goes downhill from there but I will save you the details.

I had heard of him but had never seen him prior to today. Yet, I saw him twice today.....twice in one moment...the first time and the last time. We are now at the airport and headed home to the girls.

Bonnie finds this image hard to view and I cannot completely disagree with her but the look of disbelief on the little boy's face matched that of mine so I went with it. To really see the child's expression, please viw in BIG.

Uploaded and converted to mono (as goth seemed befitting) via the iPad but captured with the Nikon