The ongoing saga of the #@%!$ing rats

[xt1me]

I was woken up last Thursday in the middle of the night to a thud in the kitchen. Since I was now awake I went down and found out that one of my failed attempts at homemade chocolate bombs had fallen on the floor. A bit odd I didn't think anything at the time so I just threw it in the bin and shuffled back to bed. I didn't make it I did notice that there were very bright high beams coming from a car that had just driven into the driveway shining straight through the front door glass into the kitchen. In hindsight this must have startled the rats into running down the hall but didn't think much of it at the time. When I was going back to bed though I heard loud scratching noises.  These weren’t coming from the kitchen, they were coming from my computer room, which is the opposite direction in the house. I went in and turned on the lights to have a look around but obviously I didn't see anything but all I could think of was oh God I hope the rats aren't back in the walls. But of course, it's in the middle of the night, there's absolutely nothing i can do about it, so i just went back to bed.

 

So in the morning I had to start work. I work from home so I was set up in the computer room. I probably was at work for about an hour and there was that noise coming out from behind me and I turn around and what do I see? A rat running along the floor! I know it was about 8:00 when this happened because I immediately went and emailed my landlord to say I had rats again. Unfortunately this was the Friday before Christmas so I'm not even sure anyone was in the office and even if there was, there's no way the rat catcher place would probably open up for Christmas so I wasn’t really expecting a reply. I got someone to cover me for 15 minutes and went down to the shop to get some rat traps but that was pretty much all I could do.
I did put the rat traps down that night and nothing happened I did some Googling and got advice to use peanut butter instead of the rat bait that came with the traps. It seemed to work because the next night they definitely sprung the trap in the kitchen. Unfortunately it didn't get caught. The trap got sprung again the next night and didn't the rat didn't concoct then either. Very annoying. The rat trap did get flung underneath the countertop and I spent ages trying to get the fish it back out so I now have a have it on a string so if it gets lost under there I can just drag it back.

 

It's definitely going around the kitchen because I've heard noise coming from there and seen knocked over things but I've made sure all my food is put away as best as I can. It's also definitely still getting into the computer room because I had some chocolate on my desk and I came back in one of the mornings to find little bits of tinfoil scattered all over my keyboard so I tossed that in the bin and made sure to clear everything from my desk. Obviously I didn't do it well enough because I had forgotten about a mostly finished pack of halls soothers that have been on my desk since the last time I was sick and I think the rat got drunk on them last night. I got woken up at 3:00 in the morning to the sound of skittering back and forth across the floorboards so  unfortunately the rat completely bypassed the both traps I have down.

 

There's absolutely nothing further I can do until my landlord gets back to me which unfortunately is looking like isn't going to be until the new year so all I can really do is wait and see and just hope this stupid rat springs one of my traps.
It's possible that when the guy was coming in to install my new fridge he knocked whatever sealant was in behind the back of the sink covering up one of the rat holes. Because I know one of the first times the rat catcher came out to this place when I was here he sealed a bunch of holes. One of them was under the sink which is where the plug for the fridge is. Obviously all this is conjecture as I have no definite proof of anything. It's also possible there's a hole and the wall somewhere behind the cupboard I can't move on my own in the computer room. Who knows.

 

All in all this just sucks.


incidentally, my LL did give me a thing to plug into my wall the last time I had rats. It's supposed to repel rats using ultrasonic frequencies.
Needless to say it appears to do sod all.