The quiet, unspoken rule of all food courts is that everyone is totally aware that they’re not the cleanest places in the world; that many people fanging down that many meals from that many different booths is always going to be a shitshow. But, save for the occasional sparrow hopping about chasing rogue chippies, as long as nobody sees it, it’s generally fine.
Think of it as a “how the sausage gets made” kind of situation. Plausible deniability.
But when the curtain occasionally falls, hoo boy does it ever paint a horrible picture.
Video shot from inside The Galeries food court in the heart of Sydney shows a fairly stomach-churning sight: that of a whole bunch of rats freely running around the court floor, behind food outlet booths, and even across food prep benches.
The footage, posted to Reddit, centres around the Mero Mero booth inside the foodcourt, and shows at least half a dozen rats fanging around like they own the place.
The Reddit user responsible for the video claims that, while the clip only captures a small handful of rodents, at least 30 were running throughout the area. The rats, he claims, had chewed out corners of the Mero Mero bench (resulting in owners allegedly attempting to hide the holes with tape), and were clambering freely across benchtops and ovens.
The City of Sydney has been informed of the matter, but centre management asserts that a routine health check of food outlets occurred as little as under a week ago.
A City of Sydney spokesperson told NewsCorp that rats are an “issue in every major city across the globe.“
“Unfortunately, rat activity can’t be completely eradicated and there will always be some public areas that require further baiting, particularly where food and waste are discarded by the public.”
The City is blaming an unusually large amount of construction works, along with the construction of the light rail, for disturbing the CBD’s rat population, forcing them into more populated areas in search of food and water.
Complaints about rat infestations in the city council limits have reportedly leapt by as much as 75% in recent times.
Source: News.com.au.
