At dawn yesterday, the García Vázquez's, a local family from Almeria, underwent one of the most surreal and unpleasant episodes in their lives. Events began on Saturday night at the home in which they reside, located in Calle Federico García Lorca in the town of Huercal-Almeria, just outside the capital city Almeria.
Gonzalo and Ana and their two children, a 5 year old boy and a girl of 3 years, experienced a great shock in the early hours of Saturday night whilst resting peacefully at his home. Apparently, at 22.30 hours, the couple heard a scream from their youngest child who was in her room sleeping in her cot.
When investigating the distress call from his three year old daughter, Gonzalo found the small infant sitting up in bed with a wound on one finger. Gonzalo, who is a doctor, explained that "I took my daughter to the bathroom to heal her cut and then returned to his bedroom to find something which could have made the wound."
After finding nothing unusual, and seeing that his daughter wanted to go back to sleep, Gonzalo put his daughter back to bed and went back to sleep in his own room. "Within five minutes we awoke to another scream from our daughter" said the mother, Ana Garcia, who, with her husband, went running to the bedroom.
When they opened the room, they found another small cut on her finger, this time on the other hand and also realized that the bed and the pillow of the girl had several bloodstains.
"We thought the first cut could have been on a splinter or something on the bed, but when we saw the second wound, we instantly saw it was a bite" said the mother, who began searching the room for anything unusual.
30 centimeters of rodent
During the search, Ana García became aware of the existence of "a strange animal that quickly ran under one of the beds." They looked under the bed and saw it was nothing less than a rat about 30 centimeters long. "Such was the scare that we closed the bedroom door and we left quickly for Torrecárdenas Hospital for them to attend our daughter," said Gonzalo Vazquez.
Whilst their three year old daughter was being treated by doctors, parents began to make calls to get rid of the rodent that roamed the house. "We were astonished because when we call the Civil Guard they told us they did not offer any such service."
The same thing happened to contact pest control companies. "Despite offering a 24 hour service, they said they only gathered the corpses." So, finally, it was two friends of the couple who, after four hours of searching the house, found and killed the unwanted rodent.
The remains of the rodent has now been sent to Madrid to see if it is rabid and the child is under observation for any symptoms.
Neighbours in the Huercal-Almeria street say they have complained many times to the local townhall about the proliferation of rats due to several empty lots where rubbish has been accumulating, but that the townhall has so far refused to deal with the problem.
