O.k. OT sort of but funny rat story for you. When I was married we lived in the country in Georgia, I'm talking way in the country where there wasn't a neighbor for miles. My ex-husband always planted a huge garden, about an acre so obviously, when he plowed up the field, mice and rats were everywhere. Our house was kind of old and had a crawl space underneath. He had a daughter from a previous marriage that lived with us and she was about 6 years old when my son was born. So, one night when my son was about 3 weeks old I'm sitting in the rocking chair in the living room nursing him around 2 am and I see little beady eyes glowing from the kitchen. We had mouse traps set all over the house but I knew this was bigger than a mouse. It just stood there and looked at me. I told my ex the next morning and he noticed none of the traps had been tripped so he said it probably was a rat. O.k. what are you going to do I ask. He set bigger traps and said if I saw it again to wake him up. Right, I'm going to walk by a rat to get down the hall to the bedroom. So, sure enough, that night I'm rocking and nursing and the rat appears again. This goes on for about a week, I'm expecting him to sit down by me and have a cigerette and a conversation soon. So, my ex sets bigger traps and closer to where we think it's coming in (I think it had a key). Next night, same thing but this time it gets a little bolder and wanders over and looks at the trap, springs it and kind of laughs like really that's all you got and wanders down the hall. So, not thinking too clearly (I'm a town girl) I put my son on the couch and start running down the hall to wake my husband, with a rat close on my heels. I get to the bedroom and jump on the bed where my ex is sitting there dying laughing because he could hear the rat's claws running after me. Meanwhile, bad mother that I am I've left my sleeping baby on the couch so the rat can carry it off. My ex gets up and heads where he thinks the rat has gone and I run and get the baby. The rat had gone into our daughter's room and was sitting on the bookcase attached to the bed right over her head. We didn't want to wake her afraid the rat would pounce so my ex goes outside and gets our cat, who is world's best mouser. She once lined the enter bench seat of this pick up with mice one night, he wasn't amused. She took one look at the rat and said I'm not going near that. I had put the baby in his crib in another room and stayed in the bedroom with our daughter slowly pulling her down the bed by her legs and whispering to her to wake up. I get her out of the bed (she never woke up) and put her in the spare bed in my son's room. My ex comes back and says o.k. we are going to block off the bathroom where we think it's coming in and lure it out, using me a bait and he'll catch it. So, I sort of walk near it and get it's attention and sure enough it takes off after me while I run down the hall and jump over the barrier we set up. My ex has a broom (really you are going to kill monster rat with a broom?) and he does manage to knock it out enough to catch it by it's tail. He then takes it outside and kills it (I won't go into details how he did that). He said it was the biggest rat he had ever seen and wanted to show it to his brother's the next day so he sets it in the wood pile in the laundry room outside of the kitchen (I kid you not he put the dead rat right outside my kitchen door, how am I supposed to get wood out of the pile?). He did get rid of it the next day and boy did I get kidded for years after about abandoning my son on the couch and running down the hall with a rat chasing me.
I'll treat it as good practise for when I get home - our trash collectors (aka dustbin men in the uk) have been on strike since the end of June - apparently it's getting bad!!!
so I wouldn't be surprised seeing them outside. In my suite would be another story.
