Story By:  Ana Marjanovic, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency:  Newsflash

This is the moment a terrified shop owner tries to climb a clothing rail and wrecks her own store to escape from a rat.

The bizarre reaction happened at a clothes shop in the port city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, eastern China.

CCTV footage – shot earlier this month (June) – shows two women in a clothes store when they suddenly spot the rat sprinting across the floor after dropping from the ceiling.

The younger woman – named in Chinese media reports as Ms Shi – is reportedly the store owner.

Both women jump in shock and scream, but the store owner leaps in the air and tries to climb onto a clothes rack in a desperate bid to escape the rodent.

But the rack collapses under her weight and topples over onto the floor along with the woman who ends up falling on her backside.

She quickly leaps to her feet and runs out of the store while people on the pavement can be heard laughing at her plight as the footage ends.