An Ontario city’s struggle with enormous rats has gone viral through multiple stomach-churning videos of these super-sized rodents scurrying about.
Waterloo residents and university students have been sharing disturbing videos of abnormally large rats darting around a busy street, and it’s becoming clear that this is an ongoing problem.
A video went viral in early June showing alarmingly large rats scurrying across sidewalks on King Street in the Uptown Waterloo area.
The clip, captured by Wilfrid Laurier University student Olivia Masiuk, was reshared across several social media platforms, shocking viewers.
In the video, Masiuk uses a David Attenborough-style voiceover to narrate the disgusting scene, where rats can be seen scrambling between piles of garbage bags and their underground lair, seemingly unbothered by nearby humans and cars.
However, it is now apparent this wasn’t an isolated incident.
Another video captured along the same stretch of King Street — filmed in a mockumentary style paying homage to the late Steve Irwin — guides viewers through the “Waterloo Outback” and describes how the rats emerge from underground at night to feed on garbage.
A view into one of the street’s illuminated tree planters shows a wriggling mass of large rats, which the creator describes as “beasts of Waterloo.”
#WATCH: Waterloo woman reporting on ‘Crazy huge rats’ pic.twitter.com/w6ZgaYJhXv
— 6ixBuzzTV (@6ixbuzztv) June 13, 2024
The clip includes a brief interview with a business owner who has filed complaints about neighbours leaving garbage outside, which is fattening up the rats.
Waterloo’s rodent problem shocked the internet last year when rats were recorded emerging from the ceiling of a Tim Hortons at the University of Waterloo’s Student Life Centre.
@ratswaterloo this is what our tuition gets us??? @University of Waterloo @Tim Hortons #uwaterloo #timhortons #timhortonscanada ♬ fukumean – Gunna
Tim Hortons reacted swiftly to the viral video and shuttered the location, though it appears that the rat problem in Waterloo is more widespread.