WHEN Liu Junjiang spotted rats loose around in his his company’s newly refurbished office in the Chinese city of Chengdu, he and colleagues captured them. The rats had been eating lunches and biting cables. Liu and his part-time pest controllers thought it a good idea to tie the live rats to a tree. They wrote a shame message by their bodies declaring, “I was wrong. I repent.”

The police noticed the macabre installation. They took a photo and posted it to their official Weibo account. They decided it would remind residents to take precautions against thieves.

After an uproar the rats were untied.  Sichuan Online says the rats were released to a place where the “cat police would handle (eat) them”.

File under: catch your own lunch.