A plague of rats has driven a family from their home in Belfast.
Michael McCann said he caught 19 rats in 24 hours at his house in Rutland Street, off Ormeau Road in the south of the city.
McCann, his wife, Paula, and their two young children are staying with family and friends while the Northern Ireland Housing Executive – the body in charge of public housing in the region – tries to find them a new home.
The McCanns’ cat, Lady, will stay in a cattery while the family wait to be rehoused, which may not happen until after Christmas.
Paula McCann told the website Belfast Live that an environmental health official from Belfast city council visited the property and immediately condemned it as unfit to live in.
“These rats are too much to cope with. They’re disgusting and a danger to the health of my entire family and we just cannot stay there,” she said. “It’s not fit for humans to live in because the rats have moved in. Now they’re happy having a party and wrecking the place and we’ve had to move out with anything we could carry.”
She said rats chewed their way through electrical cables while the family were on holiday.
“They’d eaten through the electrical cable on the washing machine, the microwave, the kettle and even the toastie maker,” she said. “They’d used pots and baking trays in my kitchen as a toilet and left a filthy and dangerous mess everywhere. Everything has been contaminated, everything.”
Michael McCann told Belfast Live: “I caught eight rats in the first 12 hours of having the traps down, then another four, and over 24 hours I caught a total of 19. They were big, grey rats. The look of them was disgusting and to think they were in our home near our children was awful.”
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive said it was discussing housing options with the McCann family, including a possible permanent move away from the property.
