Supermarket owner ‘blackmailed’ after rat filmed feasting on food at deli counter

It’s barely a week since we shared the distressing video of a contented mouse munching on some veal inside the Whole Foods meat counter.

At the time, we didn’t think it could get much worse. Reader, we were wrong.

Perhaps inspired by the viral tail, a rat in Rome was spotted getting comfortable in what looks like a tray of fish fillets in the middle of a supermarket.

The video was taken at an unnamed store in the Prati district of Rome, and shows the large rodent casually sniffing around inside the shop’s chilled meat and fish counter.

Shared on the Instagram account ‘Welcome to Favelas’ - it has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times by people who now, perhaps, plan to grow their own food forevermore.

Worryingly, the store’s employees seem pretty unfazed by the unwelcome visitor, with one giving barely a shrug as he says: “It must have come in with the rain.”

Fellas, we don’t care how it got in there, but can you look a bit lively in figuring out how to get it out?

The owner of the store says he was blackmailed over the video, and said that the person who originally filmed it demanded money in return for not posting it online.

He told The Times that he paid up, adding: “What else could I do?”

But despite his best efforts to suppress the embarrassing footage, the clip was posted anyway and quickly went viral.

The owner said that he’s in a constant battle with rodents, which have infested the area, and closed the store immediately after the bold invasion in question.

(By the way - Whole Foods said that after last week’s video nasty, everything in the case was disposed of, the entire thing was deep cleaned, and a third party was brought in to inspect it. You can watch the video of that incident here - if your stomach can handle it.)