[Ladysmom]

Ugh! Sewer rats are HUGE, too, the size of cats!

I've had a problem with rats in barns when I've had horses over the years, but thankfully not in the house. It was bad enough to deal with the field mice that would try to move in in the winter! The last few years I was up in New York we had terrible winters and every time it would snow, Holly my Siamese would catch them (eventually), then bring them into my bed to share the fun with me and the other cats!

I must say something in defense of rats. My daughter got a pet rat when she was a junior in high school. I can't tell you how many times I said "no", but somehow Izzie came to live with us. What surprised me (and what my daughter had been trying to tell me), is that hooded rats originally bred to be laboratory rats are incredibly smart and gentle and make great pets. It also helps tremendously in my book that they are white and blond or brown, not "sewer rat brown!

We'd been through them all, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, etc., but none made as great a pet as Izzie did, I must admit. You do have to get over that tail, though!

 

[Ladysmom]

That happened when we bought our old farmhouse in New York. We had an old barn right behind the house that had just been used for storage and the barn rats had also moved in there. My ex-husband put poison up in the hayloft.

Not only dead rat bodies, but worse were the half dead bodies writhing in the grass! And my animal rights activist daughter accusing us of being murderers!

Come to think of it, that's probably why she got the pet rat years later - to punish me!