Maeve Higgins: Well, if this ain’t a bummer — rats in the toilet is no urban myth... I know

Every borough and neighbourhood is home to hundreds of thousands of them, some more than others

Rats on a sidewalk in New York. Maeve’s friend Jeff lives in Chinatown and has had an increasing number of unpleasant run-ins with rats on the streets there. Picture: Charlie Hamilton James

YOU’D like to think you’re alone when you’re on the toilet, wouldn’t you? You’d like to believe that you and your bare bottom are sitting there in complete privacy. Surely it’s safe to assume you’re not being eyed up by a creature that had somehow clambered up through the pipes, a creature like, say, a rat? Surely that’s an urban legend, the product of a feverish mind, an anxiety-ridden over-thinker?

Sadly not — the perverted rat scenario I just laid out is entirely possible. One such rat, wringing wet and bug-eyed, appeared just a few weeks ago in a toilet in Long Island, New York, in a bathroom belonging to the Arnheiter family.