When Susanne Eliasson, 53, heard loud splashing sounds coming from the toilet of her apartment in Sweden, she reckoned it was something live, but that did little to prepare her for what she found. She lifted the lid to the sight of one very unwelcome visitor splashing around, a rat.Horrified, she tried flushing it back down the way it had come but this was one determined guest and it was going nowhere. She had to pick it out of the toilet using a cloth, put it in a bucket and send it on its way out the window.
Ms Eliasson described the moment she heard the rodent splashing around in her toilet in the southern city of Gothenburg at around midnight.
She said she quickly realised the noise must be coming from 'something alive', but had to go through the nerve-wracking task of lifting up the lid to see what it was.
"I guessed it must be a snake or a rat, and when I spotted it I knew I had to take a picture, otherwise no one would have believed me," she said.
"I was a bit freaked out about the fact it was trying desperately to scramble into my bathroom."
According to local apartment manager Henrik Mortensen, rats in Gothenburg have recently become a big problem.
"It's not unusual for them to get into the pipes, but it's really unusual for them to come up through the toilet," Mr Mortensen said.
He added that the recent cold weather has driven the rodents underground into sewers.
Rats can swim for three days and are able to hold their breath underwater for up to three minutes.
Sewer systems can be food-heaven for the rodents because a large amount of food, is flushed down the toilet.
If they get desperate, human faeces can contain undigested food that the rats can feast on in a process known as coprophagy.
Source: UK Mirror
