Warning: This article contains descriptions and visuals that readers might find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

What's scarier than finding a rat in your bread?

Finding half a rat.

That's a rat, friend

A woman in Durban, South Africa had an unhappy surprise when she took out a few slices of bread only to find an odd addition.

A section on the edge of a few slices of bread appeared to have something furry protruding from it, but it wasn't quite clear what it was.

Only after consulting with some friends did one of them break to her the horrifying news: "Yi mpuku leyo tshomi", Xhosa for "that's a rat, friend". 

A video she posted on social media shows that the extra bit she found was like a physical CT scan on a rat, with an extremely clean-cut, dismembered slice with the creature's innards entirely visible.

Fair warning, it's not a pretty sight.

In denial

But the most horrifying part of the story has to be that Nombulelo Mkumla, the woman who found the rat, had already eaten half of the loaf of bread.

The slices of the animal she found were clearly from the middle section, leading to the disturbing question: where was the rest of it?

According to South African media IOL, Mkumla had bought the loaf three days prior from international supermarket chain Spar.

When she initially found the rat, Mkumla said she had gone "into denial", hoping that it was something else, but ultimately realised that the rat explanation "made sense", speculating that the rat likely got into the bread at the factory.

"This experience has been traumatic and disgusting!" Mkumla concluded.

Things like this are bound to happen

Returning to the shop to complain, she was instead directed to the bread's manufacturer, PepsiCo.

While she was eventually contacted by someone claiming to represent Sasko, the subsidiary of PepsiCo that supplied the bread, he did little to allay her concerns.

Although the spokesperson did apologise for the incident, Mkumla claimed that he said that it "gets hot" in the bakery and that "things like this are bound to happen".

He also assured her that measures were being enacted to prevent such an occurrence in the future, and that she would not experience adverse health effects; which far from comforting Mkumla, only served to anger her further.

A PepsiCo representative, likely a different one from the one she spoke to, said the occurrence was an "isolated incident", and that samples from the same batch of bread showed "no discrepancies", reported IOL.

Top image via Nombulelo Mkumla/Facebook