{"id":395168,"date":"2025-11-21T18:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395168\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T18:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T18:15:13","slug":"the-chicago-rat-hole-wasnt-made-by-a-rat-but-it-was-perfectly-hilarious-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395168\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chicago Rat Hole wasn\u2019t made by a rat\u2014but it was perfectly, hilarious Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only in Chicago\u2014and apparently only on Roscoe Street, recently dubbed one of Time Out\u2019s coolest streets in the world<\/a>\u2014could an animal-shaped dent in a slab of sidewalk inspire a civic meltdown of merch, memes and municipal pride.<\/p>\n

On January 10, 2024, the so-called \u201crat hole\u201d became a landmark overnight\u2014beloved precisely because it absolutely shouldn\u2019t be. The thing had been lurking there for 20 to 30 years<\/a>, according to researchers, minding its own business, until Chicago comedian Winslow Dumaine posted a photo of his \u201cpilgrimage\u201d<\/a> to it. That was all it took to send X (Twitter forever in my heart) users\u2014and, bewilderingly, the rest of the world\u2014into a tizzy. But rodent experts say our concrete celebrity has been misunderstood from the start, and their explanation somehow makes the whole saga even stranger.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED: According to Time Out, these are the coolest streets in the world<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dumaine\u2019s\u00a0post racked up millions of views, setting off the city\u2019s most enthusiastic novelty craze since the heyday of beloved reptilian celebrity\u00a0Chance the Snapper<\/a>. The Chicago Rat Hole spawned merch, was graced with an altar and\u2014because Chicago is nothing if not committed\u2014one couple even got married on its square of sidewalk, according to Block Club<\/a>. The hole now has its own Wikipedia page<\/a>, as all distinguished urban icons apparently do. And after months of neighbors complaining about crowds forming to photograph it, the City finally removed the concrete slab altogether in April 2024. It now resides in City Hall\u2014on the 11th floor of the Streets and Sanitation offices.<\/p>\n

But now, more than a year after its rise to fame, scientists would like to gently\u2014but firmly\u2014adjust our collective imagination. The rat hole, it turns out, wasn\u2019t made by a rat at all. Dr. Michael Granatosky, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, appointed himself the detective of this particular mystery. In a scientific analysis published in the journal Biology Letters<\/a>, he compared measurements of the indentation and concluded that it doesn\u2019t match a rat. Not even close. The most likely culprit? A squirrel\u2014thanks to the figure\u2019s extra-long \u201cfingers,\u201d which effectively disqualify any self-respecting rat from this race to the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Researchers may be unraveling a viral legend, but honestly, it\u2019s unlikely Chicago will let the truth trample a perfectly good piece of lore. Origins aside\u2014and accuracy be damned\u2014the rat hole lives on for one very Chicago reason: We will turn absolutely anything into local pride if it gives us a story worth repeating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only in Chicago\u2014and apparently only on Roscoe Street, recently dubbed one of Time Out\u2019s coolest streets in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":395169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[10336,960,5386,1818,30302,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-395168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-categories-things-to-do","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-news-weird-wonderful","13":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115589056878692085","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}