16-Month-Old Girl Attacked By Giant Rat While Asleep In Her Cot
A horrified mum today described how her 16-month old daughter was savaged by a foot-long rat as she lay sleeping in her cot. Lindsey Molyneux, 30, heard her daughter Lolly wake up screaming and went to check on her.
But she was stunned to see the little girl covered in blood with deep bite marks on her hand.
Her husband Michael, 41 then spotted the rodent scurrying around their one bedroom flat in Camden, north London.
Mrs Molyneux, 30, says the rat also chewed through Lolly’s pyjama pants.
She said: 'They went down to bed at about 8.15pm and it was about 9pm because I’m a Celebrity was just
about to come on.
'So we were waiting for that and she just started crying through the monitor. I went in because I didn’t want her to wake her twin Lily up.
'I went in there and she was shaking and I thought maybe she was just having one of her nightmares.
'She threw up on my shoulder so I walked her out of the bedroom, holding her over my left shoulder, sat her down on the floor on the kitchen and as I started to strip her I saw all the blood because I hadn’t seen it in the bedroom because it was dark.
'I just started screaming, I tried not to swear but every swear word was coming out of my mouth.
'I said "she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding". I couldn’t see where she was bleeding from then I suddenly saw her hand, you could just see that it was gushing out.
'The only way I could describe it is we were just befuddled, we just could not figure out what had happened. We’ve got no pets and there’s nothing around her bed that could do that.'
With the bleeding stopped, she called her mum and then the NHS direct in an effort to determine the cause. It was then, she said, the rat scurried past her. 'I was literally on the phone to the nurse. I saw it at the door and it was about a foot long. I just started screaming down the phone at this poor woman, "there’s a rat".
The nurse said "okay you need to take her to A&E". 'Mother bear instinct kicked in with us and we were like "now we know what it is, we have to get it out of the house".
'My husband filmed it on his phone.
'As I got off the phone, my husband ended up getting the broom. I went around the patio door, opened up the front door and as soon as I opened it up, it’s legged it.
'You could clearly see it was a rat, the size of it was massive.' Full time mum Mrs Molyneux said her GP didn’t believe the story until she showed him the footage. 'He was looking at me like I was crazy before I showed him the video.'
The couple have since disinfected and cleaned the entire house while pest control experts from Camden council have laid traps and checked nearby sewers. Lolly received treatment and is recovering well. Mrs Molyneux said the front door had been left open for half an hour earlier in the night to ventilate the house while her husband, an engineer, cooked dinner but pest controllers were still unsure how the rat got in.
'It’s not even the thought that it bit her, that’s bad enough, it’s just the thought that it was crawling on her. It’s got in once and I’m still afraid it can get in again.'
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