'Serbs in the City: Rats', by Sofija Stefanovic
Bundy. Photograph by the author.
This is the second instalment in ‘Serbs in the City’, Sofija Stefanovic’s column about her experiences as a Serbian-Australian living ambivalently in New York. Read the first instalment, 'This is a Mistake'.
So, New York is brimming, heaving, with rats. People throw rubbish into black bags and dump them on the streets, and the rodents help themselves. Squeaking, feasting rats are my nightmare and I am living it here in my new home.
I have a phobia. I’m pretty sure it started when I was twelve. My poor dad was dying of cancer and we had rats in our ceiling. I would have to climb the ladder, open the hatch, take down a bowl that had been emptied of poison pellets and fill it with new ones. Coincidentally, my dad was being poisoned by chemo himself at the time and he was dying in the next room. I started imagining dead rats falling on my head, I dreamt about them touching me and it made me sick. To me, rats equal death, and I do not want to die.