Throughout January, people across Chicago ventured out to the neighborhood of Roscoe Village to stare at a sidewalk—and pay their respects to the impression of a rat indented in the concrete. Tourists and locals have been visiting the site and leaving offerings . Someone put up a historical plaque. One couple was engaged there; another married at the spot.that went viral .
And it is quite funny-looking. Splayed out like Wile E. Coyote smashed into a wall, the “rat splat” is incredibly well defined and prompts many puzzling questions for a viewer: How did this get here? Did a rat attempt to make a snow angel in wet cement? There was a time when an out-of-the-ordinary, vaguely ominous thing—like the impression of a rat on a city road—would have been seen as an omen. Upon its discovery, soothsayers would’ve been summoned to interpret the meaning and declare whether the sign was sinister or propitious. As at the Chicago rat hole, an altar or shrine would have then been set up for pilgrims to offer dedications and make special requests.
The Chicago rat hole calls to mind other modern marvels—instances of crowds seeing patterns or meaning, often suddenly, in everyday surroundings—including another recent pilgrimage site in cement in Chicago: a large stain made by salt runoff on a wall under the Kennedy Expressway. The stain was taken to be a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary in 2005 by devout Catholics who brought candles and flowers to the site.
Whatever the reason, the rat hole’s elevation from sidewalk imprint to American wonder has been a delight and reprieve from the harsh daily onslaught of disturbing news from around the nation and world—and maybe, as Pausanias would say, “silly” and “utterly idiotic.” But certainly not a waste of
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