# Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole is a 2019 viral news story turned relatable meme about a plump rat that got wedged in a sewer cover in Bensheim, Germany and had to be freed by a full rescue crew. The photo of the rat's chubby torso poking through the metal became a Twitter reaction image about feeling stuck in life. ## Overview Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole is a reaction image drawn from a real rescue in Bensheim, Germany, where a rat got its hips jammed in a sewer cover after packing on winter weight[1]. The image of the animal's head and round torso sticking helplessly out of the metal grate turned into shorthand online for feeling physically or emotionally wedged in place[2]. The meme is basically one photo doing all the work. It shows the rat mid-rescue, snout up, belly obviously too wide for the hole it tried to squeeze through, with the sewer cover propped around its middle[1]. People pair it with captions about diets, jeans, adulthood and general life stuckness, and the tone is affectionate rather than cruel because the rat was pulled out unharmed[3]. ## How It Spread The rescue jumped from German local news into English-language coverage on February 27th, 2019, when The Guardian ran a story headlined "Fat rat stuck in manhole rescued by firefighters in Germany," complete with the now-famous photo of the rat's torso poking through the cover[1]. That framing, the phrase "fat rat stuck in manhole," is essentially the meme's title. Twitter did the rest. On February 26th, 2019, user @Sequins4Thought posted the image with the caption "I've never related to anything more than this picture of a fat rat stuck in a sewer grate"[2]. The next day, @26percentbad reposted the rat with the line "After all, aren't we all just fat rats, stuck in the manhole covers of life?"[4], which cemented the image as a self-deprecating reaction pic. Edits followed almost immediately. On February 27th, 2019, @sydneysaage posted a labeled diagram called the "anatomy of the fat german rat stuck in a manhole"[5], while @BenjaminJS captioned another edit "The saddest part of 'The Neverending Story' is when Atreyu's fat rat gets stuck in a manhole cover"[6]. From there Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole settled in as a recurring Twitter reaction image tied to Monday mornings, holiday weight and general mid-crisis energy[3]. ## How to Use The typical Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole post is the original rescue photo with a caption comparing the rat to yourself in a specific stuck situation, often about weight, tight clothes, deadlines or life in general[2]. A common convention is the "aren't we all just" framing that @26percentbad used, treating the rat as a universal metaphor[4]. Edits, like labeled anatomy diagrams or fake movie tie-ins, are also part of the format[5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole? It's a reaction image based on a real 2019 rescue in Bensheim, Germany, where a chubby rat got its hips wedged in a sewer cover and had to be freed by firefighters and an animal rescue team[1]. ### Where did Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole come from? The rescue happened on February 24th, 2019 in Bensheim, and rescue footage was posted to YouTube by Berufstierrettung Rhein Neckar the same day, racking up around 2.4 million views in four days[3]. ### What does Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole mean? Online, the image is used as a self-deprecating metaphor for feeling stuck, most famously in @26percentbad's tweet asking "aren't we all just fat rats, stuck in the manhole covers of life?"[4]. ### How do you use Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole? People typically post the rescue photo with a caption tying the rat's predicament to their own, like eating too much over the holidays or being crushed by a work week[2]. Labeled edits of the rat are also common[5]. ### Is Fat Rat Stuck In Manhole still popular? It's a classic 2019 reaction image that still gets pulled out on Twitter for stuck-in-life jokes, though its biggest viral moment was the week of the original rescue in February 2019[1]. ## References 1. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/27/fat-rat-stuck-in-manhole-rescued-by-firefighters-in-germany]() 2. [https://twitter.com/Sequins4Thought]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fat-rat-stuck-in-manhole]() 4. [https://twitter.com/26percentbad]() 5. [https://twitter.com/sydneysaage]() 6. [https://twitter.com/BenjaminJS]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/fat-rat-stuck-in-manhole Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library