A hotel supervisor was forced to drop her pants in the middle of a full midtown subway car Friday — when a brazen rat darted up her trouser leg. Ana Vargas, 40, said she was sitting in an A train heading downtown as it approached the Columbus Circle station about 7:50 a.m. when the rodent suddenly sprang. “I thought it was my pants moving,” Vargas told the Daily News. “It just crawled up my leg. I shook it and nothing came out.” But then she realized she was being attacked. “I said, ‘Oh, my God — it’s an animal on my leg!’ ” she recalled. “He was very big. I was shaking, but nothing was coming out . . . I had to pull my pants down in front of everyone on the train.” Vargas, who works as a supervisor at the Doubletree by Hilton hotel in midtown, said three men tried to shield her from flashing everyone on the train as she shook the furry culprit loose. “I grabbed his head, because he was scratching me,” she said. “I didn’t want it to bite.” The train came to a stop and Vargas dropped the rat as she ran for help on the platform. “I was very nervous,” she said. “I was shivering, shaking — everything.” Cops soon arrived and called a crew of EMTs to take Vargas to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was treated for scratches to her leg and thigh. “It was burning me, but the doctors say it’s normal,” she said. The rail-riding rat went missing after the sneaky skirmish. Vargas was given a Tetanus shot before she was released from the hospital more than an hour later. But after a day spent at work, she said she may go back to the doctors to get her wounds checked out. “It keeps burning me,” she said. “I’m worried.” Vargas said she was traumatized by the freak rat raid and is now nervous about riding the train to work every day. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. In January, a straphanger took a video of a rat running around on a downtown 4 train. The video shows the rowdy rodent scrambling around the car until it skittered across a dozing man’s lap. MTA supervisors conducted additional inspections after the most recent vermin incident, and will alert cleaners if needed, the agency said in a statement. “It is important to note that we routinely clean subway cars, station platforms and track areas of debris that may attract rodents,” the authority said. “We use rodent resistant trash receptacles and routinely power wash platforms. Additionally, we use both pest control contractors and in-house exterminating forces to bait track areas and nonpublic station areas.” Riders can help by refraining from eating in the subways and by throwing trash in garbage cans, the authority said. A spokesman from TWU Local 100 said the union launched an anti-rat campaign last year that caused the MTA to grant an additional $1.6 million for new trains to increase trash pickups.
