Us vs. Rats pt. 2

Previous Score:
Rat(s): 6
Us: 0

Current Score:
Rats: 8
Us: 1

continuation of below story...

7. Saturday night, jenie & i get home really late, about 1:30am. i go check out the traps. one of the traps is standing up vertical against the wall right next to our couch, with the trap side facing the wall (so we see the back of the trap). i poke at the trap with the end of a broomstick. the trap kinda moves, but doesn't flip or fall over. starting to get a feeling there's a rat there. too grossed out to try more. jenie doesn't have her contacts in, but pokes some more at the trap. pretty sure there's a rat as there is resistance from the trap flipping over. really grossed out. we go to bed.

yes.

we leave a dead rat in our house overnight. hey. it was 1:30 am. we weren't going to do it that late and we weren't going to call someone to come over that late.

sunday morning, i wake up, and we're supposed to go cheer on our small group's softball team (since our service is at 4pm for the next month and a half). i go check out the trap again and see a furry body. confirm there's a dead rat in the trap. i say we cannot leave a dead rat just hanging out in our house. so... jenie and i, as completely grossed out as we are, clean up joseph (what we named the rat). we started with a bag, but neither of us wanted to get NEAR the thing, so we grab a box and set it on its side close to the joseph & the trap. i hold the box down with one stick and jenie pushes joseph & the trap into the box with another stick. we get most of him in and flip the box up to get the rest of him in it. i put the box in a garbage bag, and we throw him into the garbage.

SICK.

we pull out the couch and find a lot more rat droppings. we proceed to vacuum it up, but our stinking vacuum cleaner breaks and starts smoking in the middle of this process. we try to fix the vacuum cleaner. finally give up, and go to the softball game very late.

Rat(s): 6
Us: 1

8. I check out the glue traps next to the hole in the sliding screen door. there are NEW rat prints on the glue trap. confirm there's more than one rat, especially since jenie heard more noise sat night, when joseph was already dead in the trap.

Rats (now confirmed plural): 7
Us: 1

after the game, charlie & michael come over to help us clean the rest of the rat poo and try to fix the vacuum. we fix the vacuum long enough to clean up the rest of the poo before it totally breaks. charlie & michael look around our backyard and find a hole in one of the grates that leads to underneath our house. we find the entrance to our crawl space in a closet, open it up, and shine a flashlight in. we can only see the area right underneath the opening, but it is LITTERED with rat droppings.

DISGUSTING.

confirmation there are rats living underneath our house.

Rats: 8
Us: 1

we still have a trap set up as well as the useless glue ones (rats are obviously too big for the large-glue-traps-made-for-rats to work on them). for your viewing pleasure... joseph (since his head was caught in the trap, and we were too grossed out to fully flip the trap over, all you can see is his body and tail. check out how long the tail is! plus this is a large rat trap. not a mouse trap. joseph is big.)



click on the joseph link above for more.

saga to be continued...