Woman forced to drop pants on New York subway after giant rat runs up her trouser leg

A hotel supervisor was forced to drop her pants in the middle of a full midtown subway car on Friday — when a brazen rat darted up her trouser leg. Ana Vargas, 40, said she was sitting in an A train heading downtown as it approached the Columbus Circle station about 7:50 a.m. when the rodent suddenly sprang. “I thought it was my pants moving,” Vargas said. “It just crawled up my leg. I shook it and nothing came out.” But then she realized she was being attacked.
“I said, ‘Oh, my God — it’s an animal on my leg!’ ” she recalled. “He was very big. I was shaking, but nothing was coming out . . . I had to pull my pants down in front of everyone on the train.” Vargas, who works as a supervisor at the Doubletree by Hilton hotel in midtown, said three men tried to shield her from flashing everyone on the train as she shook the furry culprit loose. “I grabbed his head, because he was scratching me,” she said. “I didn’t want it to bite.”

The train came to a stop and Vargas dropped the rat as she ran for help on the platform. “I was very nervous,” she said. “I was shivering, shaking — everything.” Police soon arrived and called a crew of EMTs to take Vargas to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was treated for scratches to her leg and thigh. “It was burning me, but the doctors say it’s normal,” she said. The rail-riding rat went missing after the sneaky skirmish.

Vargas was given a Tetanus shot before she was released from the hospital more than an hour later. But after a day spent at work, she said she may go back to the doctors to get her wounds checked out. “It keeps burning me,” she said. “I’m worried.” Vargas said she was traumatized by the freak rat raid and is now nervous about riding the train to work every day. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.