A giant rat has emerged from Mexico City’s storm drains, providing a very large body of evidence that garbage is a big problem when it comes to flooding during the rainy season.

The rat, originally a Halloween prop, was among the items that have been retrieved by city workers cleaning out the drains — 20 tonnes in total.

The unusual and somewhat startling discovery was made by workers in Magdalena Contreras on Friday.

Photos of the seated rat, which is as tall as the workers who found it, have gone viral on social media generating no end of memes.

Heavy rains in Mexico City have triggered flooding in the area due to garbage that has accumulated in the drainage channels. According to some accounts, the rat was a Halloween prop that washed away during a storm years ago and ended up in the city’s drains.

In light of last week’s record-setting rains, Magdalena Contreras Mayor Patricia Ortiz made a public appeal for residents to dump their garbage responsibly. In addition to the rat, workers have found armchairs and other furniture, including a bathtub, that people simply dumped in a ravine. The garbage was then washed into the drainage system by flooding. Some areas saw 1.5 meters of standing water.

“We are never going to beat nature and therefore I want to call on people to stop littering because the drain was filled with garbage and an armchair,” the mayor said.

“It has been five hard days of teamwork to help the families who were affected [by flooding],” the mayor wrote on her Twitter page. “In the days of cleaning the river and ravine we have found tonnes of garbage. We cannot allow the accumulation of waste that puts many families at risk.”

Source: La Vanguardia (sp)