'Giant rat' stabbed to death by housing worker in New York

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Housing

A "giant rat" terrorising residents of a New York housing project has been stabbed to death by a man armed with a pitch fork.

Housing worker Jose Rivera impaled the huge rodent this month when he was filling rat holes at the Marcy Houses complex in Brooklyn. He said it was one of three that came running out of the hole.

"I hit it one time and it was still moving," Mr Rivera told the New York Daily News.

"I hit it another time and that's when it died — I'm not scared of rats but I was scared of being bitten."

Marcy Houses Tenant Association head Naomi Colon told the newspaper there had been reported sightings of the giant rat for at least six years, while other residents said cats living there feared it.

"They get together and gang up on the cats," resident Stephanie Davis told the Daily News.

Animal experts have identified the monster rodent as a Gambian pouched rat, which is a fairly common pet rat.

They are nocturnal, can grow to three feet and weigh four pounds or more and live seven or eight years, the New York Daily News reports.

Imports have been banned since 2003, when they were blamed for a monkeypox outbreak that sickened 100 people in the U.S.

Dr Paul Calle, director of zoological health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said the Marcy Houses specimen was probably an escaped or discarded pet who decided to join the regular rats.

Marcy Houses is the housing project where rapper Jay-Z grew up.

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