Woman's bizarre late-night find in toilet: 'Panic set in'

A woman was woken by strange "splashing" sounds from somewhere in her house, and once she realised they were coming from her toilet it started an hour-long ordeal which left her scared to go to the bathroom for days.

Nicole Chitty was home alone with her cat Ava and was later relieved she had closed the toilet lid before going to bed in her home in Auckland. It was around midnight when she started to hear the noises.

"I got up and I turned some lights on and I stood by the entry to the toilet and just waited. The splashing started again," she told Yahoo News. "I had closed the lid on the toilet for reasons unknown to myself, but I thank past me for doing that."

She hurried to grab her hockey stick, her selected "weapon of choice", and slowly started to pry open the toilet, shocked by her discovery.

"I came face to face with a rat," she said. "We proceed to stare at each other and I gradually became aware of the fact I now have to figure out how to get it out of my toilet, that’s when the panic set in."

Resident put on 'big girl pants' to get rid of intruder

Nicole decided the best way forward was to get the rat into some kind of container and then release it outside. Despite feeling "overwhelmed" she decided to put her "big girl pants on" and figure out how to do that, eventually deciding to put her laundry tub in front of the toilet and use her hockey stick.

"As soon as I lowered the hockey stick into the toilet the rat knew what to do, it grabbed on and didn’t move as I pulled it out and dumped it onto the tub... it quickly started to clean itself."

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Unknown how rat got inside toilet

At first Nicole thought Ava must have brought the rat in, but she then figured it was unlikely her cat was able to both open and then close the toilet lid after its deposit.

"I have no idea how it got into the toilet but I have a feeling it came up the pipes somehow, no other way to explain it," she said.

"Let's just say it took me a couple days to get my confidence back to use the toilet."

It's not a pleasant thought but rats can easily swim up sewer pipes and into toilets thanks to their sharp claws, which allow them to climb, and their flexible spines, which enable them to fit into tight spaces.

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