NEW MANHATTAN, Nov. 17—Shock and awe swept Earth’s last remaining supermetropolis this evening after it was revealed that Mayor Theodore Hessel IX was not actually a human being, but rather a turgid squirming mass of hundreds of sewer rats compacted into the shape of a man.

Sources say aides began to suspect Hessel’s true nature after he insisted custodians not exterminate any rats found in the building, but to instead release them into his care.

“Well I always thought that was kinda odd,” recalled head custodian Duncan Reemer. “I mean we must have brought fifty, sixty of those damn things up to his office, and each time he would take the rats out of the cage and stuff them into his shirt, where hundreds of other rats were orbiting his unseen torso in a dark frenzy.”

Recent polls indicate that despite the initial shock, a vast majority of New York voters are largely unperturbed by the revelation that their elected official is really just a slimy assemblage of trash-eating vermin. At press time, the mayor’s approval rating had risen by just over thirty percent.