Over three weeks ago I posted under “The Trouble with Rats” http://www.tourguizhou.net/the-trouble-with-rats/ .
I detailed the issues in dealing with the rats in my old house. I never wanted to kill anything, but I finally got frustrated and had to drown a rat to finally get rid of it. I am happy to report that I haven’t seen a rat (or evidence of a rat) in my house for over three weeks.
The rat that was drowned wasn’t the same rat that crossed my living room. That rat was never to be found again. I baited the trap with all kinds of cool stuff, such as potato, lunch meat, cheese, and peanut butter. I never caught him. Now I think maybe it was my imagination. The trouble with rats is that when you see them, you see a lot more. Any noise, or movement in your house is immediately attributed to rats. A bird chirping outside the house sounds a lot like the squeak of a rat. If you walk past a mirror and catch your image moving in the mirror, your brain immediately thinks that the movement might be a rat.
Perhaps the reason the rats haven’t returned is the public nature of the execution of the last rat. I dropped him and the rat trap into a bucket of water in the back yard. Any rat that observed this probably told his little rat friends: “Don’t mess with Jack. He’s a killer.”
Anyway, I am aggressively trying to catch another rat, with a carefully baited trap. There are no takers yet, but I’ll be ready when they come . . .