A family in a suburb of Stockholm was briefly terrorized by an enormous rat -- not including the tail -- that had family members jumping on chairs and left the cat “terrorized for a week.”
The behemoth, dubbed a “rat from hell” by Swedish website The Local, crawled into the family’s kitchen through a hole up from the cellar. Signe Bengtsson was the first family member to spot the beast.
"I couldn't help but do the old classic and jump on the kitchen table and scream," she told The Local.
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Reached by phone Thursday at their house in Solna, a few kilometers north of Stockholm, Erik Korsas told FoxNews.com he at first didn’t believe his wife’s description of the scurrying critter.
“Next time I will believe my wife when she hears something behind the dishwasher,” he said.
Korsas said his smallest boy had labeled it a "Putin rat," but not because of any resemblance to the Russian leader.
"He said it because it had invaded our home -- and therefore it was a Putin Rat."
An exterminator eventually killed the rat, which measured 15 inches from nose to claws -- not including the tail. Ordinary rat traps wouldn’t do for Ratzilla: For this task, the exterminator brought in special giant rat traps.
“When they build mouse traps or rat traps, you think that the mouse or rat should be killed by the spring when it is activated. This was so big over the neck the trap didn’t kill it,” Korsas said.
He had heard tales of rats that grow to the size of dogs in New York City subways, an urban myth apparently known around the globe. Korsas said the exterminator told him about similar beasts in Sweden’s big cities, which live the good life and gain weight, just like people do.
“In Scandinavia, everything is bigger,” he joked.
While the hole the rat scampered up through has been patched, there’s still a chance the family may see more of the creatures.
“The exterminator said the rat came from our basement. It had gone from a cellar ... He said if there’s one, there are more. Now they’ve fixed the hole that the rat made. But we will see.”
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