I really hate rodents!

One thing that there is not a shortage of out here are the mice, chipmunks, squirrels and PACK RATS!!

It takes every nerve I have to take a dead mouse out of the trap. I shoot any chipmunk that comes near my house, the squirrels stay away - which for their sake is a very good thing, but then there are the stupid RATS. I have spent several hours patching every tiny hole that I could to keep rodents out of my house, but somehow I can not keep the RATS from coming in. They have to be coming in from the bottom, under the bathroom and I am not about to crawl under the house to find the hole!

Our first summer we had our first RAT behind the washer and dryer. I made the executive decision to go to Vernal and buy rat bait, and it killed him. In the heat of the summer he passed away of undetermined causes between the walls, talk about stink. I begged Roger to get him out, but he said that I had made the decision to put the poison between the wall, so I could fetch him myself. I took it for 2 days and then I decided that I would show him, and I tied 2 towels around my face,  put on my rubber gloves, gathered up my pooper scooper and started the operation. I am not ashamed to admit that I did not succeed, and I had to get the hired man to finish the job. When Roger came home, I told him that I was never going to try that again.

Last fall when we came home from the mountain after gathering the cows, there was the fresh sent of dead RAT coming from the wall. I am sure that it had something to do with the remaining poison that was still there but since it was cooler we just waited that one out, and I was unable to find exactly where it was at. Then came Monster Rat, he was so destructive and noisy. He would come out about midnight and it sounded like thunder, he would chew and gnaw on everything, but I was not going to poison him. I set traps and he wouldn't throw himself into them, I bought glue strips and he did walk across one of them, but he chewed off his foot and tail. He even chewed off about an inch of the glue strip, I was hoping that would kill him but it didn't.

One night I woke up to hearing the hot water heater bubbling and I couldn't figure out why, so I got out of bed and walked into the bathroom and the floor by the washer wash covered with hot water. All of the chewing that the RAT had been doing was to the hoses to the washer. Now these were the expensive hoses with metal in them and he had chewed right through them. At that moment I declared war on him! I set out the poison and he wouldn't eat it, so once again I poured it out between the wall. Nothing changed except for now he was working on the hose that goes to the toilet, until this past Tuesday. I came home and I could smell something, was it a gas leak, Rogers dirty socks, I couldn't quite figure it out. Since I had decided that this was SUPER RAT and he was never going to die, it didn't even cross my mind that it was the RAT......until last night.....then I knew.

So this morning I asked Roger to fetch it out of there, he went to the creek, cleaned out porch, cleaned his pickup, and started on the shed. I had to use some of my womanly skills of persuasion, but I somehow convinced him to come to my rescue and get the RAT. Oh my heck, did it stink, but it is gone after 4 months of trying to kill him!!  

Monster Rat, minus one foot and tail!