I smell a rat!

The house that we are sitting does have a clothes dryer in the basement, but Ruth prefers to hang the clothes to dry. We never had a dryer at home, and they are expensive to operate. Anyhow, one day a couple of weeks back, Ruth noticed that a sock had disappeared from the lower drying rack. She found it around the corner behind some boxes. She kind of shook her head, but didn't think anything more of it.


Then a few days later, a tank top disappeared. Very strange. Upon closer inspection, we found rat droppings near a drain hole in the floor. Then, we looked in the cold storage room. This is where the little guy has been living! And we have a feeling he's not that little! There are some baskets of potatoes down there, and he's moved them all around, even removing some of them from the baskets and putting them into a little cubbyhole behind the shelf.

Ruth's Dad had a rat in his basement at some point, and still had the rat traps he used to catch it. So we borrowed the 4 traps and set them up. These are actually the same as mouse traps, only bigger. So I set them up in the basement, with a piece of chicken as bait on each one. The next morning, all the chicken was gone, and the traps hadn't gone off! This is one crafty rat!

I did some research and found that rats love peanut butter. But apparently they like chicken too, so I put chicken on the two inside traps, and peanut butter on the two outside ones, and lined them up against a wall with the food part closest to the wall. He would have to walk over one trap to get to the next one. This should've got the little bugger!

The next morning, I went to check the traps. One trap had gone off! And the food from that trap was gone! But there wasn't a dead rat in sight. How did he set off the trap without getting caught??!! The other food was still in the traps.

Now, he's gun shy. We've had food set out the last few nights and it hasn't been taken. I guess if someone tried to hit you on the head every time you had a bite, you might not be so keen to take another bite.

He's a smart one, but we'll get him eventually.

We're off to Ottawa to visit my parents until tomorrow. Have a great weekend everyone!