ICYMI: Dance Of The NYC Churro Rats

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — When one's entire universe consists of the dank, oily track bed of the N/R/W train at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, and when a single, glittering tube of fried dough and cinnamon — a churro in full and perfect form — somehow finds its way down into this dark and unforgiving underworld, there is no question: One must fight to make the churro one's own. The whole churro, and nothing short of it.

Rasheda Akter, a 28-year-old hairstylist from Queens who runs Rasheda's Bridal Beauty in Kips Bay, was headed home from work around 8 p.m. Monday, she said, when she spotted an odd dance playing out on the tracks at 59th and Lex.

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"I had just gotten in the station," she said, "and it seemed like there was something going on under there. I saw something being pulled from one side to the other."

So, naturally, she took out her smartphone.

The resulting video is a thing of beauty. To the tune of a 59th Street busker's Spanish guitar, we watch as two identical but independently willed subway rats — little hairy replicas of the humans fighting tooth-and-nail in the streets above for the fruits and spoils of our city, U.S. capital of individualism and excess — throw everything they've got into the awkward struggle to possess the whole churro, and nothing short of it.

"Someone was playing music in the background," Akter remembered. "It was very funny."

As these things go, by mid-week, ViralHog had already reached out to Akter and snatched up the rights to the churro rat video, according to her husband, who originally uploaded it to YouTube.

But these guys feel more timeless, somehow, than the pizza rats and milkshake squirrels of viral videos past. Long after the content sharks milk Akter's clip for all it's worth, we're sure of it — the dance of the NYC churro rats will continue to belong to all of us, separate but together, forever.

Video footage by Rasheda Akter, courtesy of ViralHog. A hat tip to Gothamist for spotting it first.