Don’t get me wrong. Rats are really cute. They’re friendly, smart creatures and they have pink noses which wiggle like Nicole Kidman in Bewitched and they make great pets.
But there’s a special circle of hell reserved for these rat-tailed faceless entities, as captured on camera by Tim Clerke in his mum’s kitchen.
You can watch their squirmy plight in the video Tim originally posted to Facebook below:
The production worker from Auckland, New Zealand, popped over to see his mum after she made the creepy crawly discovery on her kitchen floor.
Tim and wife Nicola Clerke were ‘horrified’, he said:
Nikki is horrified and will have nightmares for weeks!
Where most would’ve left the squirmers to go about their business on the floor, Tim proceeded to pick them up as to get a closer look… As you would do in the wilds of New Zealand’s North island.
Baffled by the as-yet unidentified beings, Tim took out his phone and filmed them in their bizarre wriggling dance which they continued in the palm of his hand.
He took to Facebook to get some much-needed clarity, writing:
My mother found these on the kitchen floor this morning. One is still alive. Anyone know what they are?
At the time of writing over 5,000 people have watched the video, some of whom commented to say they were dumbfounded byt the UWOs (unidentified wiggling objects).
One member of the Internet Jury decreed they creatures were, simply put, ‘rat tailed maggots’. others chimed in with suggestions like ‘deformed baby mice’, and ‘miniature bats’.
Another pointed out the beings looked like they were straight out of a swarm fit for a horror film.
They do look a little like they’ve been spawned by the brain of H. G. Wells, to be fair. So, does their arrival mark the start of the war of the worlds we’ve all been waiting for?
Well, probably not, no. So, an elaborate hoax, as experts at the University of Auckland have suggested?
Indeed, one of Tim’s hopeful friends wrote:
I’d like to believe it was a hoax, then I could sleep better.
While experts haven’t come to a definitive conclusion as to what the moving entities are, the Biosecurity New Zealand entomology team suggested the video showed the detached legs of a moth.
A spokesperson told Yahoo!7:
They suggest that something, possibly a cat, had just recently eaten the body of the moth, which may explain why a few of the legs were still twitching.
When one of his mates piped up to enquire whether Tim had kept the ‘disgusting things’, Tim replied saying he thinks his mum still has them, adding she ‘might need them for the TV interviews’.
Silver linings to every infestation, hey?
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.