Woman forced to wear a HAZMAT suit in her own garden after a plague of rats invades her £400,000 home and chews through wires in neighbour’s car

A woman is forced to wear a hazmat suit in her garden as she battles a rat infestation that invades her home.

The first thing Lesleyanne Walker does every morning is put on her protective gear before stepping outside and looking for the rodents before safely releasing her dog.

Her neighbor Marina Gvilova, who lives in the house across the road in Bushey, near Watford, even suffered damage to her car after rats ate the plastic under the bonnet.

Mrs Walker, who suffers from anxiety, claims the infestation comes from pests nesting in a neighbour’s unkempt garden.

She told MailOnline: ‘This is absolutely disgusting. I shouldn’t live like this.’

The first thing Lesleyanne Walker, 57, does every morning is put on a hazmat suit and check her garden for rats as she and her Hertfordshire neighbors deal with ‘a colony of rats’ along the way.

Residents of Colne Avenue, Bushey, are regularly confronted with the site of both dead and live rats, despite raising their concerns with their landlord – Watford Community Housing – for more than a year

Lesleyanne’s neighbor Marina Gvilova had her brand new car destroyed by what she was told were rats chewing through parts under the hood

She added: ‘I’m so anxious that it takes me ages to open that door and come out because I don’t know what I’m going to find.’

However, Ms Walker says she has been let down by her landlord – Watford Community Housing (WCH) – despite filing complaints back in April 2020.

She moved to Colne Avenue – where semi-detached houses sell for around £400,000 – in 2007 and suspects her pest problems are caused by rubbish left in the garden of another WCH tenant.

After seeing nine rat holes in her yard one morning, Mrs. Walker started wearing the hazmat suit.

She said: ‘I’m nearly 58 and this is the first real house I’ve ever had. It’s beautiful. I love my garden so much – just look at it now.

“I can pay for my cat food and my dog ​​food, and then every little treat I can save up for gets put in my garden.”

She spends her mornings cleaning her yard, filling rat holes with chicken wire, and checking rat traps.

This was first noticed by outside authorities last year when she saw rats in her garden on consecutive days.

She said, ‘Last year about this time I broke my foot and I was sitting here with my foot up and the amount of rats that came out of there [under the fence] rushing to carry food.

‘That was one day, then two days, then three days, then four days, and then I called the council.’

She paid £18 for pest control to make three visits, first to the donkeys, then to lay bait and traps before returning to see what the results were, but she has not been able to get professional help since. .

But the house was revisited this year as part of the government’s Great British Insulation Scheme to reduce energy bills.

Ms Walker says her project manager responsible for the new insulation has been ‘absolutely fantastic’ in his efforts to get the housing association to take action, but she has received mixed signals about who is actually responsible for the problem.

‘Look at my house, it’s beautiful. I just want my garden to reflect that,” she added.

The 57-year-old says she has been told residents are responsible for cleaning up dead rats themselves, despite the fact that their bins are only collected once every two weeks.

Pictured: The holes next to Marina’s fence where rodents have crawled through. Both Lesleyanne and Marina blame their rat problems on other WCH tenants

Not only have rats been killed by cats and brought home, but rats have also been seen dead on the street on Colne Avenue

Mrs Walker has now added more money to the nightmare situation by investing in bottles of ‘garbage bin odour destroyer’.

And the smell is even worse in the house across the street – occupied by Mrs Gvilova, 51, and her family.

Ms Gvilova has lived there for ten years and believes her home is being destroyed by “a colony of rats” from another WCH tenant’s property.

“When I bought this house, I felt like I won the lottery,” she said. ‘I was screaming and dancing in the office when I got the call.

“And we’ve been working on the garden for so long that I’ve spent thousands of euros on the garden because I love spending time there. The same goes for my children.”

Her brand new Toyota C-HR hybrid sustained nearly 1,000 pounds of damage while sitting in her driveway. The garage suspected that rats had chewed through internal components.

Ms Gvilova said she is now ‘terrified’ to leave her car in the driveway any longer for fear of further damage.

It has been a year since she first reported the problem, but she has been told the latest incident will not lead to the matter being resolved any faster.

The family cat has brought home numerous dead rats over the past 12 months, but ‘the only action she [the housing authority] What I do is place black box traps in my garden.

But Ms Gvilova insisted: ‘I don’t need those boxes’ because the cat brings in the rats.

Her biggest problem remains the smell.

“I am literally being denied the right to use my garden,” she repeated.

‘We spend the whole summer there. We have a lot of flies and mosquitoes, I get bitten everywhere.

‘My family is suffering, my finances are suffering and it’s affecting your social life too – I can’t invite anyone over because I’m too ashamed.

‘It’s getting to the point where I can’t even open a window because instead of fresh air I can smell the smell.

‘Sometimes I really want to cry. God forbid anyone have a neighbor like that. Why was I so unlucky?’

Houses on Colne Avenue (pictured) are selling for around £400,000. A WCH spokesperson said it was actively working with residents ‘to identify and address all possible sources of the problem’

WCH says it is actively engaged with residents and is doing what it can to support them.

A spokesperson added: ‘We are aware of these concerns and have appointed a pest control specialist. They have already taken the first steps to address the problem and will take responsibility for properly disposing of dead rats. Residents must therefore report all cases to us.

‘We are actively working to identify and address all possible causes of the problem.

‘We have also been in contact with local residents and have informed Watford Borough Council’s environmental health team. We continue to work with all parties to ensure the issue is resolved as quickly as possible.’