rat toilet bowl

Mariposa Veterinary Wellness Center in Lenexa, KS/Flickr (CC-BY)

Woman details finding a rat in her toilet, horrifying the internet 

It's a phobia you didn't realize you had.

 

Siobhan Ball

Internet Culture

Posted on Jul 25, 2019   Updated on May 20, 2021, 8:00 am CDT

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

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.

https://twitter.com/TheSpartanLives/status/1154196894270099457

https://twitter.com/mbrowntrigg/status/1154389915104399360

Others started sharing their own animal-toilet encounters, more or less horrifying depending on your phobia.

https://twitter.com/mlmohr/status/1154201589210583041

https://twitter.com/jenwells/status/1154201996443783169

https://twitter.com/thenikkibus/status/1154199371426275330

One hilarious false alarm turned out to be a used tampon, not a bloody rat.

A debate over what the worst animal to find in your toilet kicked off.

A snake is the most horrifying, obviously.

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*First Published: Jul 25, 2019, 4:54 pm CDT