It was a squeak show.
Things got freaky on a Manhattan-bound train when a funky rat flaunted its moves on a subway pole — shimmying up, down and around like an extra from “Showgirls.”
The wild scene happened Feb. 18, after a rat boarded an F train in Queens in the early afternoon, according to straphanger Amanda Maillard, who was riding from Jackson Heights to the Lower East Side to pick up groceries.
People were “moving out of the way, just trying to get away from it really, and then…this diva decided to climb the pole,” Maillard, 30, told The Post.
Unconcerned, the rodent darted up the pole, then deftly twisted itself around for added style points.
“She was definitely putting on the show,” Maillard recalled.
The bold critter then dismounted and tried to get a ‘tip’ from one gawker carrying a suitcase, only to bolt in the opposite direction after the straphanger rebuffed its advances.
“Why did no one throw it some ones? Show some support!” one person commented on Maillard’s video, which shared by the viral Instagram account Subway Creatures.
“Even rats need side hustles in the city now,” another heckled.
The rat’s moves even impressed US National Pole champ Donna Carnow, who praised its grip strength and ability to perform under pressure.
“They were starting to get into some interesting positions, getting parallel with the floor,” Carnow said.
“I think given the circumstances, it did a great job.”
The raunchy routine, however, was almost certainly driven by sheer panic rather than any attempt to score straphangers’ cheddar, according to Michael H. Parsons, a senior investigator for the Centre for Urban Ecological Solutions.
The animal, which Parsons suggested was a juvenile looking for grub, likely hit the pole to escape the commuting masses.
“This is New York, you escape people by going up or down,” he said.
The pole-dancing rat is the latest of its kind to claw its way to online fame with its underground antics, the most famous being Pizza Rat, filmed in 2015 lugging a gargantuan slice of pizza down the steps of the First Avenue L train station.
Data from the app Transit found that riders reported witnessing rats on 41% of their subway trips in the past 30 days as of Feb. 28, although it didn’t distinguish whether the vermin were spotted at stations or on board trains.
“We can’t have rats on the subway and a congestion tax — we gotta pick one of them,” Maillard said.
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