Rat found in toilet

11:57am Wednesday 12th March 2008

A COUPLE woke up to a nasty surprise when they found an "enormous" dead rat in their toilet.

Stacy Reeves, 21, of Ostman Road, Acomb, York, and her husband, Mike Reeves, 35, discovered the huge rodent in a toilet at their council home yesterday morning.

And the couple claim they received a further shock when City of York Council initially said it would not be able to remove the rat.

The city council denied refusing to remove the creature, saying Mr Reeves was told by the authority that it would try to arrange for the rat to be disposed of.

Mrs Reeves said after her husband found the rat, he telephoned the council to inform the local authority of his shocking discovery.

She said the council asked him where the toilet was, and that he told the authority it was the one in their lobby, which she said was attached to their kitchen.

She claimed the council replied that it could not do anything about the rat because it was "not within the fabrications of the house" - and that the authority said the Reeves would have to get rid of it themselves.

She said Mr Reeves told the council the toilet was attached to the house, but that the authority maintained it was not within the house fabrications.

Speaking before the council removed the rat from her home yesterday, Mrs Reeves said: "The rat's massive, enormous. I can't see its tail. It looks like it's come up through the sewer. I don't know what I'm going to do to remove it. I'm certainly not going to touch it myself. I fear they carry all sorts of diseases, and you have to be careful. I don't want to risk it in case we do catch anything. I've got a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and we don't want her to catch anything either.

"I think it's disgusting really, because the toilet is within the fabrications of the house. City of York Council built the lobby there - all these houses have them. This is what is annoying me - the council built the house this way and they won't come out."

However, a city council spokeswoman said: "There seems to have been some misunderstanding. The housing team understood from Mr Reeves that the rat was in an outside toilet, which would make it the responsibility of the tenant.

"However, the team arranged for the rat to be removed by the council's street scene team."