Something Stinks at Grand Central. A Rat, Perhaps?

Thousands arrive each day at the main information booth under the clock in Grand Central Terminal seeking information about arrivals and departures. For one rodent, the booth offered only a departure.

A rat or mouse has apparently died within or around the center interior walls of the booth, a lead customer service representative supervisor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Ernest Slaughter, said. "We're looking for him. It stinks."

The rodent died under a canopy of stars, below a famous indoor zodiac. Perhaps Orion the Hunter could descend from the constellation above and lend a hand in searching for a possible carcass. Perhaps the military inside the building could call on the Army Corps of Engineers to help.

A customer service representative who took over from Mr. Slaughter in a rotation and gave only his first name, John, said the animal had perhaps already been found. Another MTA employee, who declined to give his name, said while walking from the area, "We can smell him. We can't find him."

Few customers noticed anything amiss except that a transit worker was sitting outside instead of inside the information booth. The smell can be detected only by standing directly behind the booth. A white Air King fan lay on the floor at the back of the octadecagon booth and the door was open to air out the place.

Calls made to an MTA spokesman were not returned by press time.

Throughout the day, MTA employees dispensed information to travelers while sitting on chairs outside the 18-sided booth. They sat behind a flexible Tensabarrier divider, the type commonly found in many New York post office lines. They rattled off the time and track numbers to successive questioners. So many people ask how to get to Penn Station that the information booth has a preprinted sheet with directions, John said.

William Whyte's "Organization Man" speaks of the "rat race" of commuters from the suburbs entering the city. Christopher Gray, writing in the New York Times in 1989, noted that the Graybar building at Lexington Avenue and 43rd Street had three ornamental rats on metal rods outside the building. The scaffolding outside obscures the area of the sculptural rats, just as the one inside cannot be seen.