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People are calling it “nightmare fuel”: The idea of opening a toilet lid and finding a sewer rat swimming around in the bowl. Last week, Multnomah County Health Department released a comic strip on social media called “What to Do if There’s a Rat in the Toilet,” that has sent many Portlanders spiraling. Cue multiple articles and news segments in the local media, and hilarious comment threads on Instagram, Reddit and elsewhere.
Artist Meredith Li-Vollmer is not surprised.
Li-Vollmer has been creating comics for Seattle & King County Public Health since 2008, and none have gone quite as viral as toilet rat. She calls it her most “notorious” comic.
“The notion of rats coming out of your toilet horrifies people,” she says.
Seattle’s health department ran the comic during floods in 2023 and 2025. It got a huge media and public response both times, but in 2025, the comic got picked up by The New York Times, The Guardian and The New York Post.
Li-Vollmer is a senior communications strategist for Seattle & King County Public Health and an established voice in how to use comic formats in public health messaging. In fact, she wrote the book on it, 2022’s Graphic Public Health: A Comics Anthology and Roadmap.
Multnomah County decided to run toilet rat this year at the beginning of the rainy season. Rodents are a public health problem because they spread disease and damage property, according to the county.
“We thought it would be an eye-catching, provocative way to remind people about the public health threats from rodents overall, and give some guidance about how to handle an issue that does happen here, if not all that often, thankfully,” Multnomah County Health Department spokeswoman Sarah Dean tells WW via e-mail. “We’re glad it worked!”
Some facts: Toilet rats are much more common during heavy rain, since rats can swim from the sewer drains into pipes that connect into houses, Dean says. Sewer line breaks can also cause this to happen. The county gets about a dozen calls a year from people who have found rats, dead or alive, in their toilets, Dean says. The secret to flushing them back down—which “may take many flushes,” according to the comic—is a squirt of dish soap to smooth the passage.
Li-Vollmer has created comics about many public health issues, including long COVID, domestic violence, climate change and gun violence prevention.
“I think it’s a very empathetic medium,” Li-Vollmer says. “When people are burned out about public health issues, we can make sure people are at the heart of the messaging we are putting out.” (See: The woman’s horrified expression when she realizes there’s a rodent in her toilet.)
For Portlanders who need more peace of mind, Multnomah County Vector Control, the part of the health department that deals with this kind of thing, is offering free snap traps, plus property inspections to look for possible toilet rat entry points. The phone number is 503-988-3464, and e-mail is vector.nuisance@multco.us.
