Anonymous wrote:OP back. An exterminator is coming this afternoon. I'm not a fan of mice, but a rat is so completely unnerving.
I had been concerned about mice because there's a teardown next door, which is a huge pain in so many ways. But rats?! That makes me hate the house that soon will be towering over mine even more.
Teardown=rat city
We had that. Luckily ours were all outside but still, totally gross and scary. We got a great pest control company that set traps aggressively after we noticed a lot of nocturnal action and droppings on our gas fireplace vent. The pest guys come out frequently the first few weeks and move traps around as they study the situation, and then they come quarterly. They caught the one we now think of as Grandpa Rat in week 2. DH only saw the tail but said it was easily >12” long, which I found impossible and terrifying even after decades of NYC rat interactions. Anyway, after Grandpa Rat got caught they caught one smaller one and that was it. We think he was running the show for that colony and they scattered after his death. We’ve kept the service going for 4 years now with no other recent deaths and no evidence.