A man whose home has been torn apart by enormous rats was left horrified after spotting a 'foot-long' creature behind his washing machine.
The rodents have been terrorising his home for two months, chewing his furniture, ruining his clothes and leaving his kitchen soaked in urine, he claims.
Michael, who is disabled after he suffered a stroke in 2019, said he was "frightened to death" when he found a dead creature which looked like a small cat behind his washing machine.
"When I got up I saw something and I just thought it was a shadow," he told Grimsby Live.
"But when I pulled the washing machine back, I saw this massive rat."
"It was like a small cat. I shut the kitchen door and thought, 'what do I do?'."
He added: "I managed to take two photographs of it and then rang my sister and she came all the way from Barton. It frightened me to death, it was huge."
Michael, who has lived at the house for 22 years, said he contacted his housing provider Sanctuary Housing and a pest control worker was subsequently sent to his property to dispose of the creature.
The team had already visited his property four times before, since the beginning of September.
Initially, rat poison was only left in Michael's garden and not inside the house because he has a pet dog.
But when the situation didn't improve, workers came back and scattered the poison inside.
The distressed tenant said he now has to tie his bathroom door to his front room door at night with a scarf to ensure his elderly dog, who is 14, cannot access anywhere in the house where the rat poison is laid.
A Sanctuary Housing spokesperson said staff will be visiting Michael's property again in the coming days and that they remain "committed" to supporting him.
Workers are set to dismantle his kitchen, fill in any holes where the rats are coming from and put the same kitchen back together on November 10.
But Michael said the entire kitchen smells of rat urine and is "full of holes".
He also insisted that he should be fitted with a new kitchen since his current one is 32 years old.
Speaking previously, he said: "That kitchen is falling to bits. It smells like rat urine and is full of holes.
"And November 10 is too far away. I've rung about eight times and told them I'm going to have a breakdown, that I want to move out of the property - but I've got nowhere to go. It's madness."
A spokesperson for Sanctuary Housing said: “We are in regular contact with Mr Rutherford and last month employed a pest control contractor to investigate this issue and offer him support.
“The contractor carried out a follow-up visit on Friday October 21, will be visiting again this week and we remain committed to working with Mr Rutherford and our contractor to ensure this issue is resolved.”
