Rat winter: why vermin are crawling up our sewage pipes

Name: Rat winter.

Age: It hasn’t even properly begun yet … but when it does, you’ll know.

After a Brat summer … A Rat winter, exactly.

Who ya gonna call? Kieran Sampler, perhaps.

A rat-catcher? Operating in Yorkshire. He reckons he has killed more than 65,000 of them. Well, Poppy and Penny have, mostly.

Sampler’s sisters? Daughters? A family business is it? His lakeland terriers. He says they’re more humane than poison.

Still terrierism though. Is there any reason we’re talking about Sampler, rather than any of the other 854 pest control businesses in the UK? Because he has just dealt with a particularly gruesome case.

Ooh, go on. He got a call to a house after a giant rat came up the toilet … while a woman was sitting on it. “She was screaming,” Sampler told the Sun. “Imagine being on the toilet and something brushes against you.”

Eesh! Are we sure he’s not making this up? There’s a photo of the rat – nose sticking out of the water, whiskers, those creepy little claws.

Ew! Did Poppy and Penny do their thing? That one ended up drowning, but on the rat front, Sampler thinks “this winter is going to be bad”.

Why are winters bad? When the temperature drops you tend to stay indoors more, right?

Right. Rats, too. “As the winter approaches, rats constantly search for shelter and food reserves to survive the harsh temperatures,” a blogpost by pest control people Rentokil advises.

So, they come up the drains? Or they might be lurking under your decking. Rats love decking, apparently. And old buildings are especially vulnerable to attack. Plagues of rats have been known to rampage through ageing NHS hospitals.

Aggghhh! How do I keep them out of my home? Seal entry points, don’t leave food or rubbish lying around, cut back garden foliage. Sampler warns that bird feeders attract them. Also dog poo – pick it up.

Related: Eat, spray, love: a day in the life of one of Britain’s 80 million rats

And, of course, in a city you’re never more than 6ft from a rat. That might be more urban myth than fact, another rat-catcher told the Guardian last year. But he also said there have always been rats in the city and there always will be.

Where’s the Pied Piper when you need him? Hamelin? But remember the story: he did get rid of the rats but then he took the children, too.

Fine, have them. I’d rather that than a huge rat in the loo. Childless cat ladies are having a moment, why not childless rat ladies?

Do say: [Whistles] “Poppy, Penny, at ’em.”

Don’t say: “Aw, cute though, I name him Toilet Scabbers.”