First Draft of Foreword

Any resident of New York City rides the subway. Businessmen, the homeless, teenagers, grandparents, babies, and countless other demographics. All these humans share the subway with another type of animal; rats.
As a NYC resident myself, I’ve seen my fair share of rats. While waiting for a train, I can see movements among the brown and grey tones of the subway tracks. I see them scuttle over to empty soda bottles and fast food wrappers people carelessly toss onto the tracks. They feverishly suck out the dregs of said receptacles in a way that only rodents do. To any bystander, this is not attractive or admirable in any way, but after research on our fellow city inhabitants, it doesn't seem so gruesome.
It’s hard to make it the city and rats know this struggle like anyone else. They burrow into subway walls, digging holes deep enough to not be caught and with access to the station’s garbage room. This room is their haven, filled with trash bags to us, but hills of food for them. All stations try to rid themselves of these devilishly clever creatures with poison but rats know what not to eat and what to look out for.
To continue, while rats may cast a gross mood, the underground, dark nature of most subways produces a frightening aura. I wasn’t allowed on the subway alone until I was 12 and at night, the gloom of the subway still scares me. There’s no cell phone service and while stations have help buttons, you never know who will arrive on the platform. Ironically, the most dangerous subway station (highest crime rate) is Broad Channel in Queens. New York Daily News states that, “With just 224 people swiping into the station on an average day, that works out to 27 crimes per 100,000 trips.” Residents of the neighborhood chalk this up to the mix of “hoodlum” teens and tourists. This illustrates how crime rate does not depend on busyness of station but inhabitants.
I’ve seen rats and gotten goosebumps from a dark station and I hope this story combines the two to inspire you, the reader, to help out anyone whenever you possibly can because the city can be daunting and its up to all its inhabitants to keep it as safe as can be.