Talk of Sweden: Rat So Giant It Terrified Cat

Scientists' prediction that giant rats could someday rule Earth hits a lot closer to home when you have a 16-inch-long rodent running around in your kitchen—and that's not including the tail. Sweden is abuzz over a mega-sized rat dubbed "Ratzilla" (unappetizing photos here), which was discovered three weeks ago and grabbing headlines now after it chewed its way through cement and wood to enter a Stockholm family's kitchen, where it terrified a cat and munched on leftover food. "It was right there in our rubbish bin, a mighty monster. I was petrified. I couldn't believe such a big rat could exist," Signe Bengtsson tells The Local. "I couldn't help but do the old classic and jump on the kitchen table and scream."

Husband Erik Korsas, who was away at the time, didn't quite believe his wife's tale of such an enormous beast in the kitchen. "When my wife called I said, 'Yeah, sure, take it easy, I'll be home on Sunday.' But by then it had jumped into the waste bin and had a Swedish smorgasbord with all the leftovers," he says. When Korsas did return, the rat had chewed through water pipes and started a small flood, so they called the exterminator, who came with heavy duty traps. The beast, weighing more than two pounds, was eventually caught and killed, the BBC reports, but "no one wanted to go into the kitchen after," says Bengtsson, "and the cat was terrified for a week." (In the US, a man had his 96th birthday ruined by a rat.)