A student in a shared house found a massive rat "staring" at her from under her bed after feeling something running over her legs while she was lying in it. Katie Bohun, a 21-year-old student at Cardiff University, sent WalesOnline this video clip of the rodent underneath her bed at the house in Cathays which she shares with five other students.
Katie said that the rat's appearance in her bedroom in the early hours of last Friday came after months of the rodents "fighting and squeaking all night" in the walls and floors and leaving droppings "all over the house". A rat also ran over one of her housemates' feet after it entered a hole in the hallway.
Katie said: "I was in my room and I could hear the rats as normal. I also hear them running up and down the hallway as well in the night-time. I could hear it in the hallway and then I was like, 'Wait, that sounds like it's in my room. But how can it be in my room if I sleep with the door shut?'
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"I kept checking every half hour. I turned my torch on, turned the lights on and looked for it. I couldn't seem to figure out where it was. And then at one point I felt it on my legs in the bed, running over my legs. I jumped out of bed, flipped all my blankets and I couldn't see anything."
At first the student thought she was "imagining it", until she felt the rat again in her bed. "I was like, right, I'm looking under everything. I put my torch underneath my bed and there was just a huge rat just staring at me and it had obviously been in the bed with me."
Katie said she was left "crying, exhausted and grossed out" from the incident. She added that the rat had completely chewed through her £80 Macbook charger, which was also covered in rat faeces, and her bedroom floor was also left covered in rat droppings and urine. She decided to move back with her mum in Ystrad Mynach following the incident, but said because of this she has lost wages from her part-time job working nightshifts at a bar in Cardiff city centre.
Katie said that she went back to the student house to pick up the remainder of her belongings and clamed some of her belongings had been "completely destroyed" by the rats - including her headphones, straighteners, fairy lights, charger cables, mattress topper, duvet, bed sheets, and dream catcher - some of which were 21st birthday and Christmas gifts. She said she was "distraught".
Katie's landlady said in a comment to WalesOnline: "There is a known problem with rats in Cathays and surrounding area. The council do provide a very good pest control service. We can only follow their advice and I have responded in a timely manner."
A Cardiff council spokesperson said: “One of our pest control technicians attended this property on April 23 at the request of the landlady and we have started a baiting programme designed to eradicate the infestation."
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