Much-Maligned MTA Provides Valuable Service for Rats and the Bladder-Challenged

Everyone's been criticizing the MTA of late (and always) for upping fares and sketchily trying to make our unlimited MetroCards more expensive and limited. But it turns out you really can't say they never did anything for you. Per amNewYork, the philanthropic MTA has been busy helping out needy vermin and those with tiny, full bladders all over the city!

Rats, and sometimes cockroaches, who by all accounts would otherwise be homeless, have taken to living in cozy, warm MetroCard machines and raising families there:

Rodents are scurrying into the machines, building paper nests and leaving behind droppings for sickened repairmen to gag over, workers and union leaders say.

Not only that: MetroCard machines offer "a discreet place for people to urinate, leaving a scent so repugnant repairmen often have to stand back when they open the boxes." (For more privacy, do this in a station where booth workers were let go.)

Of course, should the MTA get selfish with these gifts, they could plug machine bottoms with steel wool, which rats can't chew through, an idea that's been discussed but is not yet under way. As for the peeing, seems it's an all-go for now unless they rehire station agents and/or raise fares so as to upgrade their bathroom facilities. In the meantime, some poor employee clinging to his job by one last thread has to wash the area and spray the machine with an "odor neutralizer" whenever "shit happens." Fun!