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Mum and son flee London home amid giant rat plague

by JACK WHITE

A south London mum and her five-year-old son were forced to flee their flat after becoming the latest victim of a plague of giant “cat rats” sweeping Britain.

Lucy Couillaud told the Star yesterday how she and her son Sam moved out of their Tooting flat after discovering in March that their bathroom was infested with rodents nearly two-feet long.

Upon returning from a holiday, Ms Couillaud was faced with what turned out to be a baby rat running behind her bath.

A council pest controller put down three six-inch blocks of poison, saying there was a “clear indication of lots of activity under the bath” and that the intruders were “proper sewer rats.”

“I would sing manically and play very loud music when showering,” Ms Couillaud said.

Afraid for Sam’s safety, Ms Couillaud eventually relocated to her parents’ house when he was with her.

“I didn’t want him to be exposed to the germs, be bitten, stand on one or eat food that had been tainted,” she said.

But eventually she summoned the courage to look under the bath to see if the poison had worked.

“That was when I saw my first ‘cat rat’,” she said.

“It was about the size of a six-month-old kitten, half-way between being a really kitten and a proper, chunky cat.”

A handyman came to remove two of the giant rat corpses, but when he came face-to-face with a live super-rat, he downed tools and refused to work until they were all dead.

“The smell was probably the worst thing,” Ms Couillaud said.

“The strong smell of rat pee was there for the whole tenancy. I didn’t chase it up to be honest. Not until I saw the rat.”

Unable to stand the infestation, Ms Couillaud moved out after four weeks of being a “nervous wreck.”

Pest controller Whelan Services told reporters this week that it seen a 15 per cent rise in rat call-outs in the past year.

The firm wants the EU to approve stronger poisons due to Britain’s rodents becoming immune to existing chemicals.

But changes to EU law have placed limits on the strength of poisons, leaving Britain to face a rising tide of super-rats.

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