There's a Rat in the Kitchen, what I'm a gonna do?

I got an e-mail from my boyfriend Chris today, it was pictures of this poor mouse stuck inside a printer... he was all smooshed and stuck in there, but still alive.
As soon as I saw it, I had this horrible flashback to my first nanny job.

I was 19, maybe 20 at the time this happened. I was living with a family of 4, Jeff, Pam and their two little boys. I was their nanny, brand new to the field, clear on the other side of the country, my first real time away from home. Needless to say, most everything that year was an experience, some good, some bad.

I had been there for about 4 or 5 months... loving my job and I felt like part of a family. I really was when I think about it, Pam and Jeff and I are still friends, and I have visited them a few times since I moved back home. Really good people and this story is in no way a reflection of them. (disclaimer).

My room was the room directly underneath the children’s room.
One night, while I was lying in bed attempting to sleep, I heard this noise, a sort of scratching coming from the ceiling. I really didn't think much of it, until it started happening on a regular basis.
I wondered what could be making the noise, perhaps a mouse? It did sort of sound like a small animal trying to dig, so I mentioned it to Jeff. He checked it out, and we determined that perhaps it was mice, and he set a few traps.
The noise did eventually go away, and we thought that was that.
Then the noise came back, only this time, it was louder. The mice had either gotten bigger, or it wasn't a mouse... YIKES!!!

Then, I started to notice things, belongings of mine missing, my razor, a sock, the lid to my perfume, weird things, right? , and occasionally my trash would be tipped over. I was pretty good about keeping stuff off my floor, or so I thought. Then, one night, after I had made a point to clean thoroughly, I had taken off my shoes, and put them next to my bed and went to sleep. When I woke up, I noticed there were TEETH marks on the sole of my shoe!!!!!!
OKAY----those were NOT there when I went to bed, so I put 2 and 2 together and figured out that I had had a visitor in the night. Whatever was making that noise, and whatever had been swiping my stuff, had come into my room WHILE I WAS SLEEPING!!
I was very unsettled, to say the least.

I went right to Jeff and told him what was going on. He went out and got traps, rat traps, gulp!!
These were the semi-humane kid, those sticky ones, where the rodent sticks to it, and then it’s not smashed in two by a metal trap. All that got us was a bunch of rat turds and hair, but no rat!

Then he went out and got one of those metal ones, like a cage. The 'plan' was to catch it and then drown it in the pond out back. I come out of my room one day, and Jeff, the comedian he was, had put one of the boy’s stuffed toys in it, and I freaked out... that was a good laugh for all of us!!
But still we got no rat.

A few days later, my friend, Laura, had come over so our charges could have a play date.
I was standing in the kitchen and I noticed something in the hallway out of the corner of my eye... so I turned to look and there, in the hallway, staring me in the eye, was the biggest RAT I had ever seen, in fact, the only rat I had ever seen.
This thing was huge, it was the size of a small cat, and its tail had to be a foot long, we stood there a second, Rat...human, staring at each other, and then it bolted down the hall the direction of the children’s room.
I had to do something!!

I called Jeff, tried calmly to tell him what was going on, and I forget what he said but, after the phone call, I grabbed a broom, and Laura grabbed a dishtowel, and we put the kids in the playpen, and set out to get it!!
I know we had no clue what the hell we were doing, but we were going to get that Rat...
We never did find it, then Pam called, I was on the phone with her, freaking out, when the stupid thing came out of the back room, into the kitchen, and when it hit the kitchen floor, it slid across it hitting MY FOOT then it nose dived under the stove!!
I screamed, almost dropped the phone, and then started crying.

I know it sounds sissy, but I was really scared, it really was that big!!
Pam calmed me down, and we ended the call, then Jeff called me, an exterminator was on the way.
Laura and I sat in the living room, waiting for the doorbell, she left when he got there.

Enter the exterminator: "Mr. Rat"... a 300 lbs guy with glasses, and the worst case of plumbers butt I ever saw.
he goes into this speech about how this green stuff he is about to plant around the house kills rats, it makes them bleed internally, and they need water, so it drives them out of the house. Therefore he Guarantees that the rat won't die in the house. He tells me about the Guarantee about 5 times, along with numerous stories of rats he has seen, yada yada. I didn't care; I wanted to know that that rat was never going to visit me ever again.

Then he tells me why I saw it in the daytime. Apparently, rats are nocturnal, and when the colony, yes COLONY is low on food, they send out a hunter rat (the biggest one of the colony) to search for a new food source.
OH MY GOD, it was the biggest rat of the whole freaking colony!!??
GREAT!! I wonder if this thing was my midnight visitor...ewwwww, I just got the chills thinking about it.
Anyway, he drops these green pellets all over the house, behind the fridge, the stove, out of human reach. Then he hands me the bill, reminds me AGAIN about the Guarantee, then leaves.

There I am alone, with the children, in this house and the hunter rat still on the prowl.
I was not happy.
I was scared, of a rat.

By the time Pam and Jeff got home that night, I was fine, and then Jeff had to help... I do appreciate his humor now, as I can laugh about it, but then, it was not so humorous to me.
He says, "Hi, Heidi! how was your day, Heidi?" with this big grin on his face.

Next thing I know, reggae music is playing "There's a rat in the Kitchen, what I'm a gonna do, there's a rat in the kitchen...." I tried hard to not be mad, we all did have a good laugh, no one was hurt, the kids were ok, and we had a Guarantee that there would be no more rats, especially dead ones in the house.
YEAH!!!

A few weeks later, after the whole rat thing was forgotten, I woke one morning to the smell of death. I don't know how I knew it was death, but it was.
I summoned Pam to confirm my sniffer, and sure enough, the stupid rat, or one of them had taken the bait and crawled into the wall between my room and bathroom and died, and now I had to wait out the smell of rotting rat until it was done decaying... that was awful
I can still remember that smell.

sigh... we do learn so much from our experiences, but all I gained from this one, is a strong distaste for things that crawl, like rats, mice, spiders and stuff like that. Before all this, I could handle them ok, I could even kill spiders if I had too, and even though I got over it, I really did, I can tell you now,
I HATE MICE AND RATS!

This is why I don't like rodents Chris!!