NEW YORK – New Yorkers are used to seeing rats where they catch their trains – not where they buy their burritos.
About a dozen rats were having a grand party Friday in a locked KFC/Taco Bell restaurant, scampering around the floor, playing with each other and sniffing for food as they dashed around tables and children’s high chairs.
Onlookers could not keep their eyes away from the jaw-dropping sight – a gang of urban vermin invading a restaurant that had been taking people’s chicken and taco orders just a day earlier. Video of the rats was seen around the world, disseminated on TV stations and the Internet.
“All you can eat once the store is locked,” one onlooker joked.
Word spread after a TV crew discovered the rat infestation Friday morning and filmed it through a window of the Greenwich Village building.
The restaurant was not open when the rats were spotted. The company said construction in the basement Thursday appeared to have stirred up the rodents. “This is completely unacceptable and is an absolute violation of our high standards,” Yum Brands, the company that operates the restaurants, said in a statement.
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