This happened a few weeks ago to a guy I know who has a second floor apartment. His son is up late playing video games, goes to use the toilet, lifts the lid - HUGE rat floating in the bowl. I saw a picture and the body looked to be almost 8 inches/200mm long. They flushed but it wasn't going down. Their landlord called a pest control company who charged $300 to come out and remove the rat. The guy who came picked it up by the neck with a loop thing and strangled it to death. They said the rat was pregnant and alive but sleeping likely due to exhaustion.
What confused me is how the rat got to the second floor when there are bathrooms on the first floor. My acquaintance told me the pest control guy said "they get sucked up when you flush." though the physics doesn't jive. I can imagine that a rush of water down a pipe could produce a gust of air in the opposite direction and a piston effect but lifting a one pound rat over 10 feet vertical?
It seems more likely that it crawled into the stack vent on the roof and came down with the current. Still doesn't address why it didn't stop at any of the floors above, but maybe they were all occupied.
What confused me is how the rat got to the second floor when there are bathrooms on the first floor. My acquaintance told me the pest control guy said "they get sucked up when you flush." though the physics doesn't jive. I can imagine that a rush of water down a pipe could produce a gust of air in the opposite direction and a piston effect but lifting a one pound rat over 10 feet vertical?