Leicester overrun with cannibal rats

Furniture gnawing rats have turned to eating each other as the vermin problem spirals out of control.

Tenants are demanding to be rehoused in order to get away from the vermin that have caused blood to seep through the walls.

Rats grow to dictate the space they occupy

The rodents typically encamp themselves in insulation spaces and roofs from which they urinate on clothes and leave droppings around the homes they occupy.

One resident described the situation as a ‘living nightmare’.

Another said: “I can’t sleep at night because I can hear them scurrying about.”

The vermin are notoriously difficult to tackle

Whilst pest controllers set traps for the rats and have collected two or three carcasses a week, but the creatures were breeding faster than they could be killed.

Though the problem is not thought to have been experienced by students as yet, it could soon spread given the typically poor quality of student accommodation.

Kerry Pick, a mum-of-two, said she was resorting to taking anti-depressants due to the misery.

She added: “This has made our lives a living nightmare. In our attic there are lots, from babies to adults. It is disgusting and they have made me ill. Rat traps go off all night waking everyone up.”

A council spokesman said: “Our pest control team has been working closely with the occupants of a number of flats in this building since the rat problem was first reported in October.

“We’ve also made a number of structural repairs, including to the sewers.”

They added: “We are continuing investigations to establish the cause of the problem.”

The problem has surfaced just a few months after a leading Leicester academic claimed that rats will grow to become larger than cows as they gradually fill an empty space in the ecosystem.