Anger as dead rats ‘dumped in street’
A HORRIFIED pedestrian stepped on a dead rat in the dark and then realised there were several others scattered around his feet.
The gruesome find was made in Sarn near Bridgend by Darren Williams, who videoed the scene and posted it on Twitter.
Eight dead rats could be seen strewn across the pavement in the light from his phone.
In a tweet to Bridgend council, Darren asked: “Is this your work? I stepped on one and could draw disease to dogs!”
The following day the authority asked for clarification on the location and said its cleaner streets team would be removing the dead rats.
But two days later Darren tweeted the council again saying: “I’m reliably informed they are still there. Rats lying dead in the street! Disgusting!”
A Bridgend council spokesman said: “It would seem that the rats were caught and killed elsewhere, then dumped on the road at this location.
“Rats do not typically die in such large numbers on open or exposed ground, even if they have been poisoned with bait.
“The council arranged for the carcasses to be removed once the incident had been reported.”
Another man commented on Twitter that the dead rats – which were found near junction 36 of the M4 on a small road which leads to a bridge over the motorway – were due to the council’s “waste collection shame”.
In June, private company Kier began a new contract providing Bridgend council’s waste services, but the scheme was widely criticised throughout the summer after delayed collections left food waste bins full of maggots.
Improvements to the scheme have since been made.
In July, Bridgend was also named as the rat capital of the UK.
Data from the British Pest Control Association showed the authority dealt with more callouts to rats per head of population than any other authority in the UK.
But the council branded the survey “hugely unfair” stating that call outs were high as their service remains free and they record every report made even though there may be multiple calls about a single incident.