Is the invasion of Paris by giant rats underway? This is what Aurélien Véron, Councilor of Paris and spokesperson for the “Groupe Changer Paris” seems to suggest. Always able to vilify the policy of Anne Hidalgo and the majority on the social network, the elected official posted on Twitter, this Monday evening, the video of a rat strolling quietly in the street.
At least as big as a cat, the rodent would have, according to Aurélien Véron, made good use of last month during which garbage piled up in the streets of the capital to give way to its gluttony like a human during the holiday season. of the year: “Obese Norway rats after a month-long garbage collectors’ strike. Now diet,” he captioned the photo.
The video, repeated dozens of times this Tuesday morning already, worries many Parisians on the social network and gives food for thought to followers of #saccageParis. Here’s something to reassure them.
FAKE OFF
A quick analysis of the video suggests that the scene does not take place in Paris, but in Italy. Indeed, from the beginning of the scene, we can see a luminous sign in the background which indicates “Farmacia”, or pharmacy in Italian.
After taking several screenshots of the video, and a reverse search of these images on Google images, it appears that the video has been circulating for several weeks on Italian news sites such as Romatoday.it, Il Corriere della Citta or Il Quotidiano del Lazio.
A famous square in Rome
As early as January, the transalpine media reported the presence of the rodent in the streets of Rome. They even quote Cavour Square. A quick detour via Google Street reveals the exact location of the stage, at the corner of Piazza and Via Cicerone, in the center of the Italian capital, between Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Trevi Fountain. We also recognize the pharmacy panel and the pedestrian crossing, wisely taken by the rodent.
As for the latter, the Italian journalists explain that it is not a rat or a Norway rat but rather a nutria, a newcomer to the already rich bestiary (wild boars, gulls, etc.) of the Eternal city.
A nutria rather than a rat
Contacted by us, Aurélien Véron confesses without hesitation that he is not the author of the video and that it has nothing to do with Paris, the garbage collectors’ strike or even Anne Hidalgo, assuring that his post was intended to to react “ironically to the explosion in the population of brown rats that all Parisians experience daily”: “The garbage collectors’ strike encouraged by the Paris City Hall has not reduced this scourge, quite the contrary. The health risk of this proliferation has been confirmed and detailed by the Academy of Medicine. The information is not the video itself but the proliferation of Norway rats it evokes. »
We bet that the elected opposition could have new chances to shoot videos in Paris in the coming days, the CGT FTDNEEA having announced, a few hours before his post, to have filed a new strike notice.