Soon after Thanksgiving, I walked into our garage at night and when I flicked on the light switch, I heard a scrabbling sound of something moving quickly.  The next day Toby told me that she had heard some movement as well.  Later, I saw that one of my Cup-O-Noodles containers had a hole in it and was missing most of the contents.

I went to Lowe’s and looked for some method of eradication that would not take any involvement on my part.  I bought a set (3) of the little things that plug into the wall and create an ultrasonic noise that is supposed to drive the rats away.  The instructions say that each unit will keep about 400 sq ft rodent free.  I had 3 so I plugged all three into different outlets in my ~400 sq ft garage.  If 1 was effective, then 3 should work even better, right?  Well, no, actually.  After 2 weeks of 24 hr ultrasonic noise, we were still hearing noises in the garage, and now it was beginning to smell bad in there.

Back at Lowe’s, I looked at other extermination methods.  We’ve had good luck with traditional snap traps , but the size of rat traps (compared to mouse traps) was very scary.  You could lose a finger in one of those things.  I decided to go with the poison.  I set out 4 or 5 trays in various places in the garage, and warned the kids not to touch them.

The next day, spilled in the middle of the garage floor was a tray of poison that I had put in the rafters.  I think the rats must have known what it was and pushed it out of their area.  It didn’t look like the poison was going to work.  But the box said that the poison took 4-5 days to work, so I waited.

5 days after the poison was emplaced, I walked into the garage, and saw a lump of brown fur about the size of a softball.  It was huge.  I banged a piece of metal (a 6 foot section of galvanized water pipe, to be exact) on the cement next to it and it didn’t move, so I assumed it was dead.  Now there is a lot of stuff in my garage and this was really the only section of the floor that I can easily see.  Thank the Lord that the rat chose to die in that spot.

This was a big rat and I sort of freaked out.  I stood and stared at it for about 5 minutes.  I went and got the trash can and a shovel, but then couldn’t scoop the thing up.  I had visions of it running up the shovel handle at me.  Luckily, I have a partner who has given an oath to be with me through the thick and thin.  I went and got Toby.  She scooped the rat up and tossed it in the trashcan with only a minimum of mockery.

The next night, I went into the garage and the rat was back, full sized, in the exact same place as before.  But this time it was walking in circles.  Toby wasn’t available, and Max was already asleep so had to man up.  I got a 5 gallon paint bucket and turned it over to trap the bugger.  The next night we had a rat throwing away party, and I did the honors with the shovel (the one with the longest handle, not the short handled spade Toby used the night before).

After these two rats were gone, I stopped hearing noises.  Whew!  Now we just had to wait for the garage to air out and get rid of the wild animal smell.  But alas, the wild animal smell was being replaced by the smell of decaying flesh.  I hunted down what turned out to be the final rat and showed Max and Lucy how to scoop it up (from a safe distance).

It has been about 2 weeks and the garage is starting to lose its nasty smell.  I think I have prevailed, this time.