The King Rat

[book]

its near enough Quarry Hill but i cant say i ever heard of a story of a king rat in Quarry Hill. I expect the market has been full of rats over the years. They are partial to fruit so it will have been ideal for them under the market.

[stutterdog]

book wrote: its near enough Quarry Hill but i cant say i ever heard of a story of a king rat in Quarry Hill. I expect the market has been full of rats over the years. They are partial to fruit so it will have been ideal for them under the market. Whilst on an early turn and driving a 16 bus towards Sracroft, about 30yrs ago,I was at the Compton Arms/Harehills Lane junction waiting for the lights to change.It was about 0630am ,I looked across towards the left of the junction near a butchers shop and in the gutter rummaging was a huge rat!It was unperturbed as people walked past it,but giving it a fairly wide berth!    

[carith]

When we were kids living in the Cardigans (kirkstall road) the rats were that big they chased cats away.

[Si]

tilly wrote: I remember years ago a man walking on East Street seeing what he said was hundreds of rats on the move in his words a black mass moveing towards the river area.Im told this does happen at times if they have been disturbed. My great aunt told me that she witnessed this in the centre of town back in the 1920s.    

[Johnny39]

cnosni wrote: My Grandad worked shifts at the train station for the post office,coming home early one morning in the 1930's,walking past the market near the Market Tavern,he had to jump on a wall to get out of the way of an advancing army of rats making their way down towards Millgarth. I'm glad you mentioned the army of rats, my Dad used to tell me a story, like your's, about a similar experience he had in Neville Street, under the Dark Arches. That too would have been in the 30's. He said he thought it was caused by wet weather and the rats moving away from the river. I'm never quite sure if I believed the story or not but he said it was a story related a lot in Leeds.

[Uno Hoo]

It's a story I've heard related in lots of different times and places. My late father used to say he once knew a policeman who'd had to seek refuge from a swarm of rats - that was in Leicester.With all due respect to cnosni and others, the accounts all have the common urban myth theme of "somebody told me once." I'm not maligning cnosni's grandad or anyone else. The internet is inconclusive - I looked at urban myth sites.However, if this truly was a phenomenon, I can't help feeling that by now there would be some compelling evidence for it. So for me, it's the old open mind.

[Jogon]

Uno hooThese swarms would all be on cctv. The police et al all seem to make brass by selling their data to tv.So surely we'd have footage of the swarms. C'mon someone put em up on youtube. I had anecdotes from old relatives who 'dodged death' by ducking into the nearest pub to avoid a flock of rats.Yeah right..!Going back to the owner of this thread, cos it was vague, are you talking about http://www.leedscanvas.com/and http://www.overworldsandunderworlds.com/ (phill this isn't you is it?)

[book]

I think the original post was edited. It was enquiring whether a half rat Half person existed in Quarry Hill, I think?

[String o' beads]

book wrote: I think the original post was edited. It was enquiring whether a half rat Half person existed in Quarry Hill, I think? Oh! Is this why it was edited? Seems a bit innocuous if so? I'll chuck my 'swarm of rats' story in while I'm here. This one is relatively recent and concerns a pig farm which operated at Howden Clough in Birstall [but that's okay, because it was on LEEDS Road ] The farm was in the grounds of what looked like a former manor house, or at least a very, very, big old house set back from Leeds Road. Well, came the day they pulled down the old house, sometime in the 1980s I'd say, and said rats swarmed across Leeds Road and into the estate opposite. This was witnessed by my colleague, who lived on the estate. :shudder:

[tilly]

Most of the reported sightings on this thread were long before we had cctv I could be wrong but i think there would be far more rats years ago than now. Waste was left a lot longer before being removed and most of the places they would have lived are long gone you only have to look at the river side area to see this and pest controle is far more stringent now than it ever was then.So has i see it its not imposible for the sightings to be true i once saw pictures from Australia of a plague of mice not hundreds but many hundreds they were every were so why not rats.