Author: Allyson Chiu / Source: Washington Post
At least eight firefighters peered down at the manhole. Two of them gripped its weighty metal cover, which had been pried open with heavy-duty tools. A man wearing a black tactical vest and thick gloves knelt on the ground, focused intently on the situation before him.
The emergency? A rotund rat that still hadn’t shed those pesky winter pounds was found Sunday afternoon in the German town of Bensheim firmly wedged in an opening in the manhole cover — and it was having a full-blown freakout.
Squeaking shrilly, the chunky critter tried everything it could to escape its unfortunate position, wriggling its furry brown body from side to side and furiously kicking its hind legs, but nothing appeared to work. The rat was stuck, and would probably remain that way unless it got some help.
Enter rescue workers from a local animal nonprofit, Berufstierrettung Rhein Neckar, and an entire group of volunteer firefighters.
The elaborate operation to free the rat — documented in more than 20 photos shared to Facebook and a — has gone viral this week, making headlines worldwide as many have delighted in the compassion shown toward an animal usually regarded as a pest.
“We don’t make any difference between animals,” Andreas Steinbach, a spokesman for the animal rescue organization, told The Washington Post Wednesday. “We don’t kill animals, we rescue them.”
It began with a call. Children had discovered the distressed rat trapped in a manhole cover and two rescuers were dispatched to the scene, Steinbach said. But when they arrived at the town, located about 50 miles south of Frankfurt, the volunteers soon realized getting the rat unstuck was far more complex than simply pulling it out.
“The rat had quite a lot of winter fat and got stuck on its hips — nothing was going forward and nothing back,” Michael Sehr, one of the…
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