This Diep River woman almost skrikked herself morsdood after giant rats took over her house.
Chantal Underwood, 59, says she’s been couch-surfing for the past two weeks as she’s too scared to sleep at home.
Chantal, who has been staying at the Musgrave Communicare complex for six years, claims management has been slow to do something about her unwelcome new house guests.
She has since placed buckets of rat poison in her apartment, and yesterday showed the Daily Voice a moerse rot measuring about 30cm from snout to tail, which had died after eating the rodent bait.
She says about two weeks ago, at 11pm, she came home from visiting a friend, and decided to watch a movie before sleeping.
“I was on my bed when I heard a constant scratching noise next to my bed,” Chantal explains.
She switched everything off to pinpoint the source of the irritating sound.
“I sat on my bed for 15 minutes before I saw something running from the corner of my eye, from my room to the kitchen,” she says.
As she got up, she saw another rat running from her patio door into the kitchen.
“Oh my God, I was on my nerves after seeing that.
“I froze, it sounded like a party in my kitchen, the thing was rocking,” she laughs.
She grabbed her shoes and a mop “to use as a weapon” and fled from her house to her car, where she slept for the night.
And for the last two weeks she has been staying at friends’ houses, while she waits for the building’s manager to sort out her vermin problem.
“I am a paying tenant and they need to fix the problem immediately. They have offered me a temporary unit on Friday, but I will not move back till the place is clean,” she says.
Salieg Subera, the supervisor at the complex, admits there was “rat activity”, but denied it was an infestation.
“Of the over 300 units on the premises, there have only been three calls of rats in the units,” he tells Daily Voice.
“I understand the problem and am trying to assist, but I couldn’t speak to the tenant when she was in that state.”
He says bait stations will be set up later this week to monitor the rats so they can be removed.
“She will be in her house by
Friday,” he promised.