Oh Rats

I never liked rats, and after two experiences with rats in the house, I despise them.  Here are my two rat stories.

We had been living in our newly built house in Del Mar for about six months, when I noticed that the telephone cords in my bathroom looked like they had been eaten away.  They had, by Ricky the rat as we came to call this elusive oversized rat that took weeks for the exterminator to exterminate.  If he had chewed the phone cords in the master bath, that meant he'd been in the bathroom and probably in our bedroom.  I was not happy.  Traps were set in the attic, where there was evidence of rats, but we could not set them in the house because we had two dogs at the time.  The night I saw Ricky run by my bed on his way to the bathroom was the last straw.  I called pest control and told them to come out immediately.  It was Sunday, but they came, and within two days had finally caught Ricky.  I'm not sure exactly how they finally caught him, and I don't really care, but rats were out of my life until a few years later.

We were living in Carlsbad.  We had a very old dog, Barney, at the time, who couldn't hear or I guess smell very well, because we had a family of rats who were making nightly visits to our kitchen, and Barney slept through it all.  I didn't.  I hear rustling in the kitchen, and being the coward that I am, woke Ron.  He was slightly better at attempting to solve the problem.  He went with a flashlight, but as soon as there was light on the scene, the rat disappeared.  We called the pest company, the same one we used in Del Mar, and they came out to inspect.  They found that there was probably a family of rats in the walls of the house.  This is very hard to get rid of.  We put a sticky trap in the kitchen and yes, we caught one.  I screamed as Ron put the rat and trap in a plastic bag and dumped it outside.  This was not the end of the problem, as there was a whole family.  I don't know how many children they had, but it took weeks resolve, and several more sticky traps and lots more screaming.

So now you see why I have such antipathy for the rat.  I was going to tell you some interesting facts about rats, but actually more personal stories are a little more interesting.  I'll give you some interesting facts about some of the 56 known species of rats at another time.