Fayetteville woman battling mega-rats in her apartment

"You start hearing scratching in the walls. You can hear it in my bathroom and in the laundry room," Turner told WRAL News on Friday.

She said she first encountered one of the oversized rodents a week ago when it snacked on cereal in boxes atop her refrigerator.

"He jumps down off of the cabinet and plunges into the Honeycombs cereal, and then he goes to the Froot Loops, and then I had another box of Honeycombs. So, all of them was open," she said. "He is right there, and he jumps back up like there was a ladder.

"You can hear him, like, eating in there, and he runs all across the top of the cabinet, and he jumps back down," she added.

Large rat traps and sticky paper are all over her apartment. She has put her in food in plastic tubs to protect it, and she takes her son to her mother's house at night for protection, noting that the rodents are now trying to break through the plaster in his bathroom.

"When my son comes in from school, for the hour that we're here when the rats are not in the apartment, we're digging through bins to get to our food," she said. "We don't want the rats to get in here and contaminate the food because they carry disease, and they could bite him."

Turner said she isn't sure where the rats are coming from, but she suspects a sewer line in front of her apartment building might be to blame. She said she told the complex's management about the problem, but they're not doing enough to help her.

"I'm not being taken seriously," she said. "I know plenty of people that probably live with a mouse or probably live with roaches, but how you live with rats, and they just moved here?"

Managers told her to stay at a motel, and they would prorate her rent until they get rid of the rats, she said, adding that the situation is costing her money she doesn't have.

The management company hasn't responded to WRAL News' request for comment.

Turner said she’d be willing to move into another building in the complex that doesn’t have rats, but residents in other buildings say they’ve been dealing with the problem for years.

"I really want out of here, but I was told that I would have to pay early termination fees – two months of rent, that's $2,000 out of my pocket – when i just paid all of these fees to get in here," she said.