The New York City rat is ruthless.

If you were at the corner of Essex and Rivington on Friday afternoon, you likely saw a Volkswagen sedan on fire. A plume of smoke billowing into the sky. Yet, this wasn’t any ordinary blaze. Blame the family of rats allegedly nesting in this guy’s engine block.

They were apparently pretty active, having gnawed through the engine wiring, sparking the blaze.

“I drove the car for about 4 miles out from my apartment when I began to smell burnt plastic and road kill,” the car’s owner, Alec Steinfeld, wrote on Facebook after the ordeal. “Then smoke started to pillar. I pulled over and got out of the car. My engine was done within 3 minutes. The fire department arrived shortly after.”

Steinfeld went on to say, “When I opened the hood, I found 2 dead baby rats within the ledge. After the fire was put out, a charred mom/dad rat camped out in the rims of my tire. Obviously, the culprit.”

The holdover rats would not leave the tire for about four hours, until antifreeze was sprayed to scare them out.

Rats gnaw through everything; they do it to survive. Their four front incisors never stop growing – about five inches per year – and rely on chewing to grind the teeth down. Otherwise, if too long, they could lock the jaw or pierce the brain.

Every story has a silver lining, though. In this instance, it’s that Tony Hawk was there to capture the whole thing. We were told that Tony Hawk seems to “run into” fires every time he comes to New York City, which explained his gawking at this scene.

“The whole story is so absurd, it’s hard not to enjoy,” Steinfeld concluded.

Only in New York, folks.