Hoax: Smell a rat? Giant rats in Tooting is a "hoax" that fooled the national papers and us

Giant rats have been found on a housing estate in Tooting

Lord Dean Burr, a Lord and pest controller from Wimbledon, was working in Wandsworth when he came across the huge rodents.

Wandsworth Times:

Lord Burr said: "The rats were discovered in a housing estate just off Tooting High Street. We have been looking after the estate for some years and the rodent problem had been on and off.

"Roughly two weeks ago we noticed on a routine inspection that the sides of our rat boxes which contain poison had been chewed around the entrance hole, which sparked the initial concern so we then decided to lay down some Rat Traps.

"We returned on Monday, April 11 to check the traps, which is then where we made the shocking discovery of these two foot plus rats. 

"They were still alive, since the traps used were not man enough to take on rodents of this size and were instead just "stuck" inside the traps. Having walked around the whole site we caught seven in total."

Lord Burr said he believed the rats had grown so large because of the "amount of rubbish and easily accessible food" available on the streets, as well as rats eating other rats.

He also said: "We need stronger poisons and the local councils need to be making sure all residents have bin storage to cut down the amount of plastic bags left outside houses, as this all provides foods to fatten them up."

He said he had never seen anything like it in the 15 years since he set up Lord Environmentalists.

He told the Daily Star: "Getting six this big in one swoop is unheard of. I reckon we got the majority of the family.

"They were big, a foot to two feet long – that’s the size of a cat."

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