Long after darkness has chased the commotion from Market Street, after steel shutters have been drawn full over the glass storefronts of the Gallery, when footsteps echo in the cold halls of the underground, then SEPTA’s 11th Street subway station belongs to the rats.

“Rats?” says the 11th Street SEPTA ticket-taker who instinctively checks his feet as he opens the metal door to his cubicle to answer a question. ”Which one did you see, Harold or Chuck or Henry or Sam? They’re out here every night.”

. . . And Tom and Steve and Mildred and Sally, big rats, little rats, fat rats and frisky ones. There are squeaking lines of newborns, feisty youngsters and fearless stud rats. There is also the occasional gray-brown old rover with a scarred snout and missing tail for whom, after a life of scratching survival out of the hard urban underground, Providence hath just smiled.

For SEPTA’s 11th Street subway stop is the rat promised land. It overfloweth, if not with milk and honey, with dripping Coke cans and half- eaten pizzas. Its trash cans offer a cornucopia of rodent plunder, sticky trays of Szechuan leavings, flavorful shish-kebob sticks, goopy cups of melted yogurt, hamburger wrappings, soggy pretzel hunks and delectable chunks of discarded caramel popcorn. . . .

Rattus septacus never goes hungry.

“I wouldn’t just say that there are rats down here,” said Reginald Trummel, 35, who takes the subway out to West Philly late each weeknight after getting off work at Jefferson Hospital. “There are large extended families of rats, generations of rats . . . all thriving. It’s been like this down here for years, and it just keeps getting worse.”

The station looks great. Renovated with a shiny aluminum veneer, the walls are sleek pink, the old concrete ceilings are covered with snazzy blue siding and the platform pillars are wrapped in aluminum tubes with “11” cut out over a blue backing. SEPTA keeps the station clean, too. Even after 11 p.m. the platforms are swept clean and the trash containers are only half-full.

But whatever is there is enough. In the long quiet between trains, every designer trash can rustles with life. Rats scrape in the ceiling overhead, and casually drop out from behind the aluminum cladding on the walls and pillars to saunter across the platforms.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a serious problem down there, particularly at 11th Street,” said John Rafes, assistant administrator of the city’s vector-control services. “There is nothing peculiar about that location that explains why the problem is so bad there. And it doesn’t appear to have happened overnight.”

Rafes said the city has had complaints that the rats have begun venturing up the steps toward the Gallery and Market East Station.

“I don’t know how it got that way,” said Frank Russo, a SEPTA assistant chief engineer. “We have a pest-control program, but obviously it’s not sufficient. We have been meeting with the city rat-control people, and we are in the process of letting a contract to get a private contractor down there within the next few weeks. But right now, it’s evident that the rats have been reproducing faster than we’ve been killing them.”

This is no surprise to James D. Begley, manager of the Radio Shack at 10th and Chestnut Streets. Begley often works late before locking up the store and catching the Market-Frankford Line home. He says he has been watching the situation worsen for years.

“One night I got down there at about 10:30 and I counted 17 rats,” Begley said. “It’s scary. I mean, everybody knows there are rats underground in the city, but they usually try to avoid people. You may glimpse a rat down by the tracks from time to time. But at this station, it’s like they’ve taken over.”

Experienced passengers such as Begley and Trummel are wary. They stick together near the turnstiles and stay away from ends of the platform and from the trash containers.

But not all riders at that hour are as experienced. One night last week Drexel student John Schultz and two female classmates came breezing in laughing after a night on the town. The young students blithely skipped down to the end of the platform to sit together on a wooden bench. All the knowing eyes on the platform followed them, and kept watching.

The scream came just seconds after they sat down. A quick seven-incher dropped from behind the wall and scurried out between one of the girls’ feet toward one of the cans.

There is something physically jolting about the unexpected sight of a rat, as if the idea Rattus resides not only in the brain but also up and down the spine. Schultz and his companions jumped to their feet and huddled together at the center of the platform.

“Oh, my God!” one of the girls exclaimed.

“Oh, my God!” agreed the other.

“They’re all over the place!” said Schultz, who looked around both nervous and amazed. “We’ve never seen this many rats anywhere before. This is hard to believe.”

The fancy trash cans consist of a metal tube in which a green plastic bag is hung. The rats drop down from behind the cladding on the pillar and gnaw their way up into the bags from the bottom. On two nights last week there was a big rat in every one.

Tapping one of these containers prompts the rodent to roll under the trash, drop lazily out of the bottom of the bag to the platform, sniff around, and then, only grudgingly obeying the instinct to flee, slip under the cladding of a pillar and vanish up inside.

“Check again in about five minutes,” Begley said. “He’ll be back.”

By late afternoon, Freddie McPhall’s faded yellow Indiana Jones T-shirt had begun to gray and there was a sheen of ash on his long brown arms and legs.

Freddie was one of the squeegee gang working the traffic island at Penrose and Pattison Avenues yesterday afternoon. He and his friends were out hustling up their last few bucks before school starts today, chasing across the avenue with bright yellow squeegees and pouncing on the windshields of unsuspecting motorists stopped at the light.

Do they ask before they clean?

“Yes,” said Freddie, who is 11.

“No way,” said Joe Butler, who is 14.

“Sometimes,” said Freddie’s slender 12-year-old brother, Donald.

“Yeah, sometimes,” said heavyset 12-year-old Clifton Collins.

“No way,” said Joe.

“Well, sometimes,” said Freddie, “But it’s better not to ask.”

Everyone could agree on that.

“We never ask,” said Joe, with finality. The others agreed.

“If you ask, they usually say no,” Freddie explained.

“I just go up and do it,” said Clifton. Sometimes they be, like, ‘No!’ Wavin’ their hands inside the car, yellin’, ‘You messed up my windshield!’ But usually they give you something.”

“They give you more when you don’t ask,” said Freddie.

Freddie starts the sixth grade at Masterman School today, and he wasn’t cheerful about it. He was making about $12 a day cleaning windshields this summer. The work is hot and tiresome, but $12 goes far enough to make it

worthwhile.

“I don’t do it every day,” he said.

He spends the money on junk food and the arcade.

“And I gave some to my mom and bought some toys for my little brother,” he said.

“And we went to the movies,” said Joe, who is taller than Freddie and dressed in a dirty blue T-shirt and blue shorts. Joe starts the ninth grade today at Thomas Junior High.

His favorite movie this summer?

“Monster Squad!” he said. There were cheers of agreement all around; the movie was a dead-cinch favorite.

“I don’t clean windshields like these guys do,” said Joe. “I sell pretzels and flowers. It’s a regular job. I make, like, about $86 a week, but my boss, he takes half of it. So I make $43 a week. I bought my school clothes with it.”

Most of the Passyunk gang were strictly into windshields, though. They figured they were out there six hours a day – at least when they felt like doing it.

“You putting our names in the paper?” asked Eric Chandler, who at 14 was taller and stronger than the others. There were beads of sweat across his face and a wide dirt smear on the front of his white T-shirt.

“Put this in there,” Eric said: “You tell the mayor to tell his police to leave us alone.”

“Yeah!” shouted Clifton.

“The police tell us to get off the corner,” said Freddie.

“And they take our squeegees,” said Joe.

“We get the squeegees at Pep Boys,” said Freddie, “and they cost two

dollars and thirty-nine cents!”

“And they curse at us and they call us niggers,” said Eric. “Put in there that the mayor shouldn’t let them do that. They should leave kids alone and let them make some money without gettin’ in trouble.”

None of the youngsters was excited about school opening today.

“The best thing about summer is being out of school,” said Freddie.

But Joe said going back wasn’t all bad. “I’m looking forward to it a little bit. I got some new stuff to wear for school. I like it better than working.”

The five kids settled for $5 in return for their time away from their work. They sprinted together into a market across the street to get change. Minutes later they were back at work, descending on another line of cars backed up at the red light.

All except for Clifton, who hung back. Clifton, who was wearing a gray T- shirt, is starting the eighth grade at Audenried Junior High today.

“Mister, I didn’t get my dollar,” he said.

Five youngsters had gone in the store with a five-dollar bill. Clifton called to his friends, “Who’s got my dollar?”

But for an answer he just got four broad smiles.

“Mister, can I have another dollar?” he asked. “I’ll do your windshield.”