Oh, rats

I have long been aware that Prince Charming isn't coming to my house anytime soon.

But imagine my horror when I glanced up at the porch light this afternoon to see what Lottie was hollering about.  I am so naive, I thought I'd see one of her idiot lizards.

It was definitely not Prince Charming.

It was not a lizard.  

It was a mouse.

 Lottie had apparently chased it up the wall onto the light fixture, and from there it tried (and failed, thank my stars) to squeeze into my attic.  Nightmare alert: mice can climb stucco walls, did you know that?  Lillie and I brought the cat inside and jumped up and down and screamed tried to decide what to do.  I posted its creepy crawly picture on Facebook and asked the team for their best advice.

Among the comments was this unpleasant news.  My furry intruder is not a mouse.  

It is a rat.  

A baby rat.

Baby rats most definitely have parents, siblings and cousins.  

Google agreed that I probably have entire families of rats running around my property.  There is a lot of that nasty ivy nearby, and rats LOVE ivy.  Google says it is only a matter of time before I have rats in my walls and attic.  I recently noticed what I thought were mole hills around my house but are, apparently, rat burrows.  Maybe I'll stuff snail bait down the busiest-looking holes--I recall, way back when I lived in an old house in San Jose, whenever I scattered Snarol there would always be a few dead roof rats lying around in a day or so.   I'll go to OSH and figure out which kind of actual rat poison seems the safest for every non-rat creature in the vicinity.

I would love to imagine that this little rodent lives alone and has no friends or relations. 

Well,  I wasn't born last night. 

 Looks like there's some pest control on my agenda.

Rats are sort of the herpes of home-ownership.  

You might control them; you might not see a rat for years; but they're never really gone forever.

Have you ever had rats?