Rodent sagas cont'd

2:30 am the baby and I are woken up because some pest drop a decorative bar of SOAP on the hardwood in the hall. SOAP?! I don't even know where it came from; never seen the lil shell shaped thing before. It looks like soap lifted from a nice hotel.

When sitting in the living room, we can hear they are in my office. Walk into the office and nothing is there. When I stand upstairs, I can hear thumps and scurries ambient downstairs. Walk down the steps and they are vanished. Get insomnia, and I can hear chewing and moving about in the walls. At first it was only the wet wall, a lovely rodent highway through a house, especially when it has a cute door for access. But last night, I heard them in the gabled ceilings of my room, which is a room away. Proverbially it's the sticks from where the action used to be. Hundchen finally noticed something up where one of the beasties was trying to cut their way through the floor of the library MIDDAY. As I type this, I can hear them in the kitchen ceiling.

This is not the first night I've been awake, listening, as though by pin-pointing the noise I could do anything. It's officially driving me mad. We have an infestation of SOMETHING! But I've never caught anything and I've never SEEN anything!

Back when I had the trapping service, we determined this was no longer plain mice. I've had some mice for ages and we co-existed in a fairly benign way. A half a box of dog biscuits hoarded onto an upper shelf confirmed that this was not mice, since mice aren't big or strong enough to carry off medium sized biscuits. But is it rats? He's fairly certain it is. If it is rats, is it one or a family. When I saw one jump from the top of the cabinet, after I removed the biscuits, I reported that it was larger than a mouse, but smaller than a rat. He suspected a juvenile rat, which would mean a family, which officially icked me the hell out.

But we have no proof. I've been putting the fruit up in the metal breadbox and trying to leave less mess out. They've ignored eggplant so I thought the massive green tomatoes were ok on the counter for one night. (I still don't like refrigerating tomatoes.) Yesterday morning something had gotten into the tomatoes. Now that I know that they will steal an old bar of SOAP, I guess I am not surprised, but...

Do rats steal soap? Could I have both rats and the squirrels? I haven't seen any mice in ages so I'm thinking they got gentrified right out of the neighborhood with these new fancier critters.

We plugged some exterior holes of concern already. Somehow though I don't feel that made any difference. I know folks say to look for holes in your kitchen, but you have not seen my kitchen or you'd laugh. When we designed and installed it, we learned that there is nothing resembling a straight line in this whole house. Some of the cabinets stand a solid 3/4" from the nearest crooked masonry wall. Then there is the 3' square hole in the sink cabinet where the plumbing comes in, because we lost the piece to put back in there and never cut a plywood replacement. Although some quarter-round might do some filling of holes, at the moment the kitchen is a crazy warren of hidey holes.

And did I mention that they were in the upstairs bath stealing SOAP?! If they are willing to go after soap, what about baby bottles full of formula?

I did some research on poison yesterday, because, well isn't that what you do? I've held off because of the two curious little kids and two dogs. I saw the faces of the vet techs when the older lady brought in her little dog for rat poisoning and it made clear that this is not a good thing to make mistakes with. 

If anyone can lend some moral support, I could use it. This is a big stresser (among several) and I feel undone by it. My house, my home, is infested. That means unclean, that means unsafe for WeeC to crawl the floors, that means a moral failure on my part. It means being surrounded by this failure, hearing it scratching behind me all the time. It means feeling helpless as things get worse. 

Comments

[Goaty]

Oh dear. Rats are awesome when you have an pet-type agreement with them. But they are smart and sneaky at all times, and no one I'd want to go to battle with. They will totally steal your decorative soaps.
Do you know any alley cats who would like a contracting job?

[greyhorsewoman]

You can hide rat poison up in the cupboards where neither pet/child will have access. You can place it out in the basement at night when neither child/pet has access to it and pickup anything still there in the AM. Rats can be very destructive, eating through wires and other items, causing lots of damage.

[Kelly]

Oh that sucks! When we lived in Texas, our house backed up to a large field, and in the winter, rats came in and set up shop in the attic. We found where they got in (amazingly tiny space for such large, disgusting creatures) and plugged it, but they were already there with no plans to leave. We set traps in the attic and caught quite a few, but never put poison out b/c I had 2 cats when I was young that were killed by eating mice that ate rat poison, and we had three cats at the time (as did my neighbors). When spring came, they vacated, but I remember those nights of waking up to hear them scurrying around in the ceiling above my bed (between my room and my son's room); I can't tell you how many rat nightmares I had. Your little bastards are even active during the day though! Argh! I'd suck it up and call in the professionals. You've got some ballsy critters there, and who knows what kind of options are available. They might surprise you. Maybe they have a poison that you won't have to sweat with the kids; maybe they can put it somewhere out of the way and safe. Heck if I know, but I say call someone. I am thinking about you and commiserating. I know that creepy feeling, and it is one I hope never to experience again. Good luck!