Call it a subway squeak attack.
Every straphanger’s nightmare was caught on a skin-crawling video showing a chubby sewer rat scurrying up a sleeping man’s leg and coming face-to-face with him on a No. 4 train in Brooklyn.
The rat attack occurred Tuesday at about 2 a.m., when rider Jeff Forde, 21, spotted the rodent as the train traveled between Franklin and Utica avenues.
“I heard a woman screaming, ‘Oh, my God, there’s a rat!’ ” said Forde, an aspiring photographer. “Since I don’t go anywhere without my point-and-shoot, I pulled it out and started taking pictures.”
Forde said the rat climbed onto the sleeping man’s lap and sat there for a few seconds before jumping off.
“The guy didn’t even notice,” he said.
Forde said he started filming the crazy scene, and that’s when the wily rodent climbed up the man’s leg a second time. As the rat inched closer to his face, the startled man woke up in time to shake it off him. “He just looked at me, waved and went back to sleep,” said Forde.
The video became an overnight Internet sensation after Forde posted it on YouTube.
Rats lurking on the tracks are an all-too-common sight, but it’s rare for them to venture onto subway cars.
“I’ve never seen a rat do that,” Forde said. “That’s why I knew I had to get it on video.”