Writer Nicole Cliffe gave many a phobia they didn’t realize they had after detailing the story of how one of her children found a rat inside their family toilet on Twitter.
“Half an hour after the kids went to bed, one of them came to Steve in the kitchen and said they couldn’t poop bc there was a rat in their toilet,” Cliffe wrote. “Reader, there was a rat in their toilet.”
https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/1154196137005314049
Some readers will now forever check their toilet bowls before sitting down to do the business.
“No. NO. I HAVE LITERAL NIGHTMARES ABOUT THIS AND SOMETIMES HAVE TO GET OFF THE TOILET MID-PEE JUST TO CHECK IF I FORGOT TO LOOK BEFORE I SAT DOWN,” one user wrote.
https://twitter.com/LouisatheLast/status/1154197290476822529
https://twitter.com/disasterballet/status/1154225721662955520
https://twitter.com/goonerkate/status/1154198372489793546
As it turns out, rats making their way into toilet bowls isn’t an anomaly. Rats apparently can swim up sewer lines, landing right into your toilet, especially if the sewage system is old.
Twitter users began sharing their own rat-in-toilet horror stories.
“We had a BABY rat in ours! Still alive! Swimming his best! Squealing pitifully for help! My mom rescued him, set him up in a little recovery room & warned off would-be disturbers with this sign,” Miranda Robinson wrote on Twitter.
We had a rat in our toilet when I was a kid! After that incident, my mom kept her sewing machine on the toilet lid so that any other rats that came up wouldn’t be able to get out. I had to ask her to move it every time I used to the bathroom.
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) July 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/TheSpartanLives/status/1154196894270099457
https://twitter.com/mbrowntrigg/status/1154389915104399360
We had a BABY rat in ours! Still alive! Swimming his best! Squealing pitifully for help! My mom rescued him, set him up in a little recovery room & warned off would-be disturbers with this sign pic.twitter.com/uUt0oR0LtK
— Miranda Robinson (@MirRobinson) July 25, 2019
It happened to me at 5 AM one morning. My wife and I were jumping up-and-down screaming. She didn’t know that there was a rat in the toilet; she thought there was a man in the bathroom. LOL by the time the exterminator got there, the rat was dead/drowned.
— Carol duBois (@theCdB) July 25, 2019
When I lived in Nicaragua, a friend’s wife got bit on the ass by a rat as she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Total long-needle-rabies protocol in the abdomen.
— Snuffy (@saintsnuffy) July 25, 2019
Others started sharing their own animal-toilet encounters, more or less horrifying depending on your phobia.
This is also good: pic.twitter.com/2drDAOaiUM
— Jarin (@Jarin50926789) July 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/mlmohr/status/1154201589210583041
https://twitter.com/kaysarahsera/status/1154198529713328128
https://twitter.com/LoveLolaHeart/status/1154216152970797064
https://twitter.com/jenwells/status/1154201996443783169
As a kid my folks gave me a bedroom in a former guest suite with its own bathroom (a big luxury in a house with four ppl). A few months in as I was sitting to pee I found an enormous tree frog in my toilet & literally never set foot in the bathroom again to my parents great angst
— nikki BOOskey 👻 (@thenikkibus) July 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/alwayscoffee/status/1154199099719266308
One hilarious false alarm turned out to be a used tampon, not a bloody rat.
My son once ran into the room screaming about a bloody rat in our toilet.
— Michie (@s0ntdesm0tsqui) July 25, 2019
Nicole, it wasn’t a rat. It was an improperly flushed tampon.
And that is how my 7 year old learned about menstruation.
A debate over what the worst animal to find in your toilet kicked off.
https://twitter.com/tashakaminsky/status/1154199954803580930
https://twitter.com/tashakaminsky/status/1154207383914188800
Nah that’s a possum pic.twitter.com/vhdQZmNUEO
— healthcare ninja possum (@krisis86) July 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/ungatomalo/status/1154205547496902656
*is from rural Texas* At least it wasn’t a snake, and at least it was dead!
— Gerald Dudley (@gerladdudely) July 25, 2019
A snake is the most horrifying, obviously.
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