Well, that's one way to deal with New York City's rodent problem. A blue heron was seen devouring a huge rat in Central Park and the whole thing was captured on video.
The footage was captured by a Reddit user who posted it on the “Hardcore Nature” subreddit. As the poster explains, they were doing yoga with a friend in Central Park by the Harlem Meer on Saturday when about 10 feet away was “a big blue heron who happened to be all dinosaur.”
“We soon realized that he was hunting a huge rat. The battle did not go well for the rat, and the process was not spectacular for the weaker ones,” the user wrote. “The rat fought hard and bravely for its life, but was fatally wounded by the beak of the heron, and then shook it by the neck until it suffocated.”
By the time they started filming “the blue heron eats the rat whole like a snake”, the poor rodent (perhaps fortunately) had already passed away. In the three-minute video, the majestic bird can be seen holding the limp rat in its beak, then swallowing the whole animal in a few gulps in nearly two minutes.
Near the end, the outline of the rat can be seen sticking out of the bird's neck, with its tail still sticking out of its beak.
The Central Park Blue Heron eats the city rat whole
u/Particular-Neat-3328, HardcoreNature
Although rodents aren't necessarily the blue heron's number one food, the National Audubon Society says the bird's diet is “highly variable and adaptable.” Blue herons mostly eat fish, but they will eat frogs, salamanders, turtles, snakes, insects, other smaller birds, and yes, even rodents.
As one commenter succinctly noted, “Please send this bird to the subway stations!”