The articles Giant Rats and Giant Rats: II have been quite popular since I published them. Every now and then I get a run of people looking for them. People searching for “huge rats” or something similar is the usual way they end up here.
This story from a couple of months ago now reveals another one found up in County Durham. And it should come as no surprise whatsoever that the grainy photo on the left is the only evidence of this astounding and dramatic find.
To any normal person – me, for example – finding and killing a “rat” (the most reviled animal on the planet) which was as tall as me and trying to steel my tractor, and which had just broken down the barn doors and ripped off the Crook-Lok with one paw, would lead to calling at least one of the local authorities and possibly a wildlife outfit immediately. Hell, I’d probably call the Army! And Nick Pope.
And if ever I DO kill a rat or find something dead in the garden that the cats have had, it goes in the wheelie bin (assuming it will fit, of course:giant rats tend to be, well… giant, and my cats are listed in The Book Of Revelation – nos. 664 and 665, I think). What I don’t do is drive out somewhere remote, bury it, and then tell everyone I forgot where I put it, but that it was bigger than a Land Rover.
Not so with any of the people in the places where these “rats” are found. unfortunately. Standard practice there appears to be to take ONE grainy picture on your mobile phone, bury the corpse in an undisclosed location, then start shooting your mouth off to the national media about how giant rats are making your life a misery, with their loud music and other antisocial tendencies.
Incidentally, what led me to find this new story and write this updated article was the fact that on BBC Breakfast (this is story IV) they were rattling on about the wet summer leading to an explosion in the rat population, with the suggestion that they are also “bigger” than normal. So we can look out for more on this topic in the coming months, I suspect.