24 Dash has reported that a “giant rat” terrorizing residents of a New York housing project has been stabbed to death by a man armed with a pitch fork.
Housing worker Jose Rivera impaled the huge rodent this month when he was filling rat holes at the Marcy Houses complex in Brooklyn. He said it was one of three that came running out of the hole. According to Rivera:
“I hit it one time and it was still moving. I hit it another time and that’s when it died — I’m not scared of rats but I was scared of being bitten.”
Marcy Houses Tenant Association head Naomi Colon told the newspaper there had been reported sightings of the giant rat for at least six years, while other residents said cats living there feared it. According to Marcy resident Stephanie Davis:
“They get together and gang up on the cats.”
Animal experts have identified the monster rodent as a Gambian pouched rat. They are nocturnal, can grow to three feet and weigh four pounds or more and live seven or eight years.
Imports have been banned since 2003, when they were blamed for a monkeypox outbreak that sickened 100 people in the U.S. Dr. Paul Calle, director of zoological health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said the Marcy Houses specimen was probably an escaped or discarded pet who decided to join the regular rats.
