Norwegian Tenants Turn Tail, Leaving Rats Up to the Rafters

When landlord Per Hatlen went to the house he had rented to a middle-aged couple, he not only smelled a rat, he smelled 1,000 of them.

The renters began breeding rats at home to sell to a pet shop, but the shop went bankrupt. The couple decided to keep 10 to 15 unsold rats, including a pregnant female that escaped from her cage.

Before long, more than 1,000 rats were roaming freely in the house, gnawing the furniture and forcing the couple to sleep on a mattress in the living room--a rat-free zone.

Just after New Year’s, the invaders captured the living room.

Most of the rats were roaming freely, but several hundred were stuffed in small cages with up to 40 in each, where they had started eating each other through hunger, authorities said.

The landlord returned to find the renters gone and the rats in charge.

Finally, the rats were all gassed to death.

“The house I had lived in since 1965, and rented out for the past six months, had become a giant rats’ nest. I was stunned. Every time I opened a door, my shock increased,” the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang quoted the landlord as saying.