Even rodent-weary New Yorkers were deeply moved by the sight of a rat so fat it died after gorging on garbage in Riverside Park — with some comparing the sidewalk scene to high art or “a New York sculpture.”
The rat was found squeezed and slumped between the bars of a trashcan near Riverside’s 103rd Street steps Tuesday afternoon, where it apparently got stuck after slinking through the slats for a taste of the dog poo piled high within.
It hung there with its black eyes open and aghast on the overcast day, its little paws outstretched as if scrabbling to free itself before finally giving in to fate.
And while some passersby shrugged at the sight — writing it off as just another day in the city — others commiserated with the bloated beast’s predicament, and were even moved by it.
“Oh my God. What a terrible death,” Upper West Sider April told The Post while walking her dog.
“It also looks like a sculpture, a New York sculpture,” she added.
Jennifer Wenzel, 57, agreed, calling the rat “a New York City still life.”
“It’s a still life, like dead things in a painting,” she said.
Another even compared the scene to the “Death of Marat,” a 1793 portrait of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat’s murder in a bathtub. Much like the fat rat in the trash can, the painting captured Marat with his arms outstretched and the pain of injustice etched upon his face.
“I’m assuming it just couldn’t get through,” Wenzel later lamented.
Still, some New Yorkers weren’t impressed.
“It’s New York City. It’s everywhere. I live nearby and they call it Rat Street,” Rio Sultan, 27, a grad student at Columbia University. “I moved a year ago and I was shocked when I would see rats but now I’m getting used to it.”
“That’s gross,” said another, while a third gasped at the sight and fled.
But William Glendon, an 80-year-old Upper West Sider, stopped to reflect on not only the rat’s death — but the life it lived.
“I’m not offended by them,” Glendon said, wisely. “Everyone seems to hate them, so it’s not a popular opinion.”
“It’s lived a good life, living in the park.”
