Elderly woman rushed to hospital after being so brutally attacked by rat her husband thought she was shot

An elderly woman has been taken to hospital after being attacked by a rat while she slept at home. Diana Kirk, 76, was found with horrendous injuries to her face and body by her husband at 5.45am on Monday, May 9. Diana's husband, John Kirk, has spoken out about what happened to his wife and shared the graphic images in the hopes of warning others to be vigilant to rodents.

Mrs Kirk has brain damage so sleeps downstairs in the couple's home in Bingham, near Nottingham, on a hospital bed and is cared for by her husband John, aged 85, and a team of carers who regularly come by the couple's home to help them out. Mr Kirk says he was asleep upstairs when he heard a rat "scratching around" at his feet late at night, NottinghamshireLive reported .

Later, at around 1.30am, he heard the scratching sound again before he fell asleep again and woke up shortly before 6am, the time he usually wakes up. Sadly, when he went downstairs to see his wife, he found her caked in blood, with her face and neck covered in claw and bite marks.

Mrs Kirk's eyelids, fingers and elbow had been gnawed by the huge 9-inch rodent, which had been nesting in a sideboard in their home where the couple kept birdseed.

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"When I was in the army the fella in the next bed shot his brains out with a revolver but the mess that caused wasn’t as bad as this! At first I thought Diana had been shot," devastated Mr Kirk told SWNS. "There was blood everywhere. The rat had tried to eat her to get to her blood. There were bite marks on her cheek and her lips. Diana's fingers and elbow were badly chewed as well.

"It was like a scene from Rambo. Absolutely horrific. She was just shaking with her