Members of PETA have violently protested outside a Taiwanese restaurant after Din Tai Fung was shut down due to rats being discovered in the restaurant.
“Each one is a miracle”, said Astrid Farmer, an aspiring model, 23.
As it happens, Sydney’s construction boom is “stirring up rat populations” and driving them towards restaurants, according to council authorities and rat-catchers.
Two inner-city outlets have voluntarily closed in the past two weeks after rodent sightings, and experts say projects such as Sydney’s new light rail are driving the creatures into shops.
A pack of five rats was spotted in the Broadway store of Portuguese chicken chain Oporto last week and, on Thursday, a single large rat was filmed in the Westfield Sydney food court outlet of Taiwanese dumpling chain Din Tai Fung.
Geoff Milton, a Sydney rat-catcher with 35 years’ experience, said infrastructure projects were agitating the rats.
“The call-outs in the city have doubled over the last two years,” he told Guardian Australia. “All the building work that’s going on in there. Digging up the roads and knocking buildings down. It’s a lot to do with infrastructure of the city.”
Both the City of Sydney and the owners of Oporto agreed.
“An unprecedented number of major demolition and construction works have been occurring throughout the CBD, stirring up rat populations and leading to increased rat movements,” a spokeswoman for the City of Sydney said.
The company that owns Oporto, Craveable Brands, told the ABC “the vermin appear to have been dislocated by external construction activity in the Broadway area”.
Milton, who is the general manager of M&M Pest Control, added that rats were “incontinent” and thus posed a health risk.
Gross.