Two days ago, I caught a rat under my house. Last week I could hear sounds under the floor when I was in the basement and since I had troubles with mice a couple years back, I immediately assumed that they were back. I set out two of your regular snap traps and waited. I was totally caught off guard when I checked the traps to find one had a rat in it! The only experience I’ve ever had with rats was when I watched Ratatouille and this was NOTHING like that.
Since I’m so inexperienced with the new breed of rodent I was dealing with, I went out and did what any sane house owner would do and asked Google. The many people on the internet seemed to talk about a couple of common facts:
1. If there’s one rat, there’s usually going to be more
2. You have to take them out one rat at a time
3. Hire someone else to deal with it
Well since I am only interested in doing what’s best for me and will best take care of the rats under my house I’ve started researching what kind of company’s can deal with these things. That’s where I found your website.
I called Allstate Animal Control yesterday and gave them my story and information. I was contacted THIS MORNING by a ‘trapper’ that is coming to my house this afternoon. I was surprised that this entire scenario could be addressed so soon, but I guess when you call the best you get the best, or at least I hope. Hopefully they can get rid of the rats under my house as quickly as they got ahold of me!

I’ve worked in this building for 8 years and I’ve never had rats in my office until last week. It all started after the garbage trucks took a day off and all of our trash sat outside in a dumpster and rotted until the next Monday, and then the rats came. I first just saw them outside around the big, green metal box that held everything from scraps from lunch and pizza from a previous meeting. With that and all the other food in there, I’m sure it was like thanksgiving for the rodents. And with all of the flowerbeds and planters around the building, they had plenty of choices for living! We were running the rat welfare program!
Well this Monday, after the trucks picked up the garbage (finally), the rats must have had to find a new food supply because they started migrating from the dumpster, to inside of the building. On Tuesday, Caren swears on her mother’s grave that she saw one in the kitchen, I didn’t believe her until one ran under my feet later that day while I was getting a salad. I couldn’t believe it, there were really rats in the office! Sure enough, the next day someone from DPH (department of public health) was in the office informing every one of the situation and doing inspections. They told our boss that he had to have someone come take care of the problem ASAP.
Well it wasn’t an hour later that he was negotiating price and an appointment with a trapping company. I called in sick on Thursday, and the next day we all only had to work a half day so the company could come in and set up traps, or whatever they do. I guess when I go back in on Monday, I’ll see if there are still rat’s in the office, and maybe go on that trip to Wendover I’ve been saying I’m going to take if they’re still there. I’m allergic to cats, dogs, mice, and assumedly rats too so I’m not taking any chances!

I’ve lived a lot of places and seen a lot of things, from snakes in the kitchen to bats in the ceiling, but a rat in the toilet takes the cake. People always talk about the scariest moments of their lives. You hear a lot of near death experiences, the occasional skydiving story, and more often than not you hear about people coming face to face with their worst nightmares. Well last week I lived what has got to be the scare of a lifetime.
The scariest part about this I think, was that it was in my own home. When I saw the snake in my kitchen, I was in Texas, the bats in the ceiling were in a rental home in Michigan, and I even came face to face with a whale shark while snorkeling in Australia (not too dangerous but definitely unexpected). I have a knack for attracting animals to me, but this was unreal. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve suffered from a moderate form of musophobia since I was a young girl and found a mouse in my Chinese food, so you can see why a mouse in the toilet would come to #1 and not the whale shark.
It was your average Joe Saturday morning, I had woken up early (okay 8 o’clock) to try and get a run in before I met my mom for brunch. I got up set my clothes out, did a little stretching, and then headed to the bathroom for an early morning pit stop. I just got the toilet seat up when I heard an unusual sound from the toilet. Thinking it might be clogged, I looked down to find my nightmares staring back up at me. A huge, black rat was splashing in the toilet. I screamed so loudly I’m sure the entire apartment could hear me but I didn’t care, I left that building as fast as I could, and told the land lord I wouldn’t be back until the problem was solved. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a rat in the toilet to really start your day! Talk about a butt pucker!

I can’t deny it anymore: there are rats in my house. I tried to ignore the droppings I would find now and again and even brushed off the scuttling in the walls, but when I opened my son’s dresser and found a nest of wrappers and poop, I lost it. Now that I’m out of denial, I can see exactly what I’ve been blind to and what my husband has been trying to point out to me.
There are droppings underneath the couch, near vents, scattered in the carpet, and covering the floor in the shed. Not only are those subtle signs everywhere, but last week when I turned on my kitchen light in the morning, one sat right in the middle of the floor and looked me dead in the eyes before he ran off. I really lost my top after that, to think I would willingly let rats in my house? You’d be out of your mind! Especially since my son is only 18 months old, that just doubles the trouble!
Well I went Ghostbusters on the darn rodents, I sent Mark to town to bring home all the traps he could fine, big and small, then doubled it with poison boxes set out (I didn’t get as many of those but with a son so young I don’t want him to happen upon one and mistake it for a treat) for them to take back to their nests. I’ve even considered buying a little cat to keep the rats in my house in line and I would too, if Mark wasn’t allergic to them. After a week we’ve had no luck. Instead of finding dead rats, I’ve only found teeth marks, scratches, and a shredded bag of flour in a cupboard above the stove.
Even if I can’t get rid of them, I won’t give up. If the army couldn’t solve a problem, they wouldn’t give up they’d just call in the big guns, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. I just got off the phone with Allstate Animal Control, and they said they have just the man to help me with the rats in my house. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks I’ll be rat free, and worry free.

A few weeks ago I discovered rats in my barn. I didn’t really mind, it was outside and my cat would catch a few here and there, until I found the nest living under the floorboards and it hit me that there weren’t just a few, but twenty or more.  That wasn’t even the worst part, the worst was the dream I had last night ABOUT the rats in the barn.

I was upstairs cooking dinner, but I didn’t have any pasta for my spaghetti so I made my way to the basement, which somehow became my barn (it was a dream, just go with it).  The second my foot left the last step and hit the floor, I was ambushed by six giant, foaming at the mouth, rats, and they were pissed.  They attacked me and started biting at my ankles and calves, latching their teeth onto any open skin they could see.  Shaking myself free I ran for the only thing I could find, an old, beat up tennis racket.  Turning back to face my opponents I rapidly began whacking them with the net, but all it did was stun them.

I moved to a better attack, by holding the rats down with the racket and stomping their heads in with my boots, I was able to kill them.  I quickly defeated the original six and raised my hands in the air to enjoy my victory, but my celebration was cut off by the thundering sound of millions of rats moving out from behind the walls and from underneath the floors, all towards me.  Turning wildly around I saw him, the 8-foot tall rat king.  He was devilish and cruel, no mercy shown in his red eyes, and they were the last things I saw before I was avalanched by the wave of rodents.

I woke up: it was 1:30 a.m.  Now not only were there rats in the barn, but in my dreams.  I will not let this continue.  Be it with a tennis racket and boots or ten gallons of bleach or a dump truck of rat poison, these tiny little monsters won’t ruin my good night’s sleep.  Tomorrow morning, no matter what the price, I will be getting rid of the rats in my barn.

I was recently reading an article about rats on a plane and I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  A plane that was six hours into its flight to London was stopped, turned around, and sent back to Mumbai because a rat was seen on the plane.  Once it finally landed back where it took off from, everyone was escorted off the plane and the cabin was fumigated.  The passengers were delayed and placed on another flight!

I did a little more digging and it turns out that this isn’t exactly a rare thing (it’s uncommon but not rare).  Rats sneak their way onto the plane through catering vehicles and sometimes they’ve been known to stowaway in luggage, too.  Not only do the little rodents pose health hazards for passengers and crew, but also safety hazards for the plane.  Imagine what would happen if one of them got their little hands on any sort of wire in the engine! It’s very well known that rats like to gnaw on chords like that, and if something like that happens New Line Cinema would have a sequel for Snakes on a Plane.

Not only does the plane have to be fumigated after a rodent sighting, but the electrical wires and cables have to be checked, and probably re-checked after that, to ensure that the plane is safe for take-off.  I don’t understand why the news never covers anything like this?  Before you take a flight, check your bags and food for mice, I know I will.  The last place I want to be is stuck with a bunch of rats on a plane, people are bad enough!

The smell of dead rat is starting to give me a headache; no, I take that back. It’s worse than a headache it’s a 24 hour migraine that has thus far proven incurable. It wasn’t until Monday that I started smelling it, and now it’s been nearly a week and I can’t get rid of it! As a single mom with a two-year old son, I can’t have something so pungent and maybe even harmful in my house, but I also can’t afford to have some two-bit, simpleton of an exterminator smash up all of my walls just for what could be one rat. Well against my better judgment, I called a local exterminator in (without looking into him at all) to help, and a lot of good that did.
This guy was a sight for sore eyes, he showed up in an old, beat to hell Chevy with sagging Wranglers and mud on his shoes. Trying to follow my grandma’s advice of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, I smiled and welcomed him inside offering him a glass of water. He accepted, downed it and followed it up with a large belch, then told me to take him to the dead rat. Before I knew it part of the wall in my pantry was gone, and so was the man who did it. He wasn’t at my house for an hour before he skipped out on me!
Now I’m stuck here in my tiny house with a crying toddler, a dirty kitchen, an empty glass of water, a wallet that’s $200 lighter, and that dead rat smell as strong as ever; not to mention the newly discovered rat’s nest inside of the wall. Well the rodents seemed to be winning this one and I might have had to let them win if my dad wasn’t as good to me as he is, by tomorrow afternoon my headache will be cured and my house will smell fresher than ever. The moral of this story is if you’re hiring someone to rid your house of vermin, hire the right someone; do your research and you won’t be stuck, like I am, with the awful smell of dead rat.