Illustrate the Struggle This Halloween With a DIY Pizza Rat Costume

Oh, the struggles of life. Every morning seems like a battle against the world as the day turns into a never-ending race to get to work, take the kids to school, and put a little food on the table.

Almost since time began, artists have been trying to depict the war that rages within each of us as we attempt to survive existence, while still trying to find the meaning of it all. But with all the masterpieces hanging in museums around the world, mankind's plight has never been so beautifully summed up as by one lone rodent in New York City.
Pizza Rat, a 14-second video of a small creature determined to carry an enormous slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs, struck a nerve. More than 8 million people have watched the short clip on YouTube, marveling at the little guy (or gal)'s determination in the face of immense challenges. Matt Little, the man who captured Pizza Rat on video, calls it a "weird, fun ride." 

via GIPHY

Suddenly, Pizza Rat was famous, with memes created proclaiming "Believe in Your Dreams." The New Yorker published an essay titled "I Am the Pizza Rat." After all, didn't we all see a bit of ourselves in Pizza Rat? Wasn't his struggle to get that pizza down the stairs the perfect metaphor for us dealing with an overdue car payment or a lousy job?

This Halloween, you can show your solidarity for Pizza Rat by actually being Pizza Rat.

HalloweenCostumes.com has a great tutorial for a do-it-yourself Pizza Rat costume, with the company's inbound marketing specialist, Devin Rubink, eager to share the awesome (and easy) directions.

First, make the giant slice of pizza by cutting separate pieces of color-appropriate craft foam for the cheese, crust, and sparkly pepperoni, then hot-glue them onto a triangle-shaped styrofoam board. Done: Dinner is served!
Then, dress as a rat. You can purchase a rat nose at your local costume store, or just draw on whiskers with a black eyeliner pencil. Now's a good time to break out those mouse ears from last year's trip to DisneyWorld. This ridiculous souvenir I picked up at last year's Epcot Food & Wine Festival seems especially fitting, don't you think?

If you don't want to actually dress as Pizza Rat, you can set up a Halloween decor scene in your house with your crafted pizza and a prop rat. Set up your tablet with the video on loop. As the good people at HalloweenCostumes.com say, "It never gets old. Trust us. We watched it a lot while putting this costume together. Funny every time."