A man in South Boston thought he’d take a video of a large rat. Then it ran up his leg.

A hair-raising video shared with Caught in Southie over the weekend shows a large rat clinging to a man’s pant leg, apparently unphased by his screams or the light from his camera.

The man, David Gomez of East Boston, called the encounter “chilling” in an interview with NBC 10. Gomez was enjoying a night out with friends in the Seaport, he said, when he spotted the rat and instinctively pulled out his phone to take a video — and that’s when the creature ran up his leg.

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This is the latest, but by no means the only, rat encounter in Boston. The city’s public 311 service request database catalogs upwards of 3,900 rodent-related complaints received in 2023 alone. For several years now, residents have noticed the city’s rodents becoming more and more brazen. Some, like the one in the video, appear to be completely unafraid of humans.

The pandemic may be partially to blame for the recent uptick in rat sightings, according to the Boston Globe. When restaurants and businesses closed their doors, people began producing a bigger share of their waste at home, luring more rats to residential areas.

Boston charted #13 on the pest control company Orkin’s annual “Rattiest Cities” list this year, a spot it’s held for four straight years. The rankings are based on the number of rodent removal treatments reported in each metro area. 

Back in April, City Council President Ed Flynn called for the creation of a municipal pest control office that would be responsible for tackling Boston’s rodent problem — a job that’s currently shared between the departments of Public Works, Inspectional Services, and the Water and Sewer Commission. Centralizing rodent control efforts under one office would improve efficiency and help allocate resources toward what Flynn has called a “serious public health and quality of life issue.”

Flynn’s fellow city councilors and Mayor Michelle Wu indicated support for his proposal, which came on the heels of New York City’s announcement that it had hired a “director of rodent mitigation” — better known as a “rat czar” — to tackle that city’s infamous rat problem.

More locally, Somerville has also appointed a ”rat czar,” while Brookline has a Rodent Control Action Plan and Cambridge has introduced a free Private Property Rodent Control Program.