Pied Piper Where Are you?

So here's a funny story that happened just a few weekends ago.

Since there has been so many foreclosures in our area, the City of Manteca as a result, has a severe rodent problem. I've been hearing the critters in my attic for some time and Jeff has never believed me until one night a rustling noise woke us both up out of a sound sleep at about 2 a.m. one morning. When Jeff and a friend went to investigate, they discovered that there was no sign of rodents in the attic at all. But.....

We found droppings in the garage. Raegan and I even caught a varmit eating out of the bunny's dish late one night when we opened the garage door. Jeff and I set out glue traps hoping to stick something to them. One night Jeff went into the garage and heard a rustling sound. He came back inside and told Raegan that the rabbit was loose and needed to be put back in his cage. I looked at Raegan and told her that the bunny was already in his cage!!!!!! duh, duh, dummmmm. You know what that means. There was something else making that noise. Jeff and I crept out and found a RAT!!!!! with it's tail stuck to the glue trap. While we both screamed at the top of our lungs, Jeff picked up the glue trap (with a pair of long pliers) and tossed it into a large black garbage bag and then into the bottom of the big garbage can.

So one day Jeff had enough and decided to clean the garage out completely. We moved everything out of the garage and vacuumed up what seemed like an extremely large amount of droppings. He followed the droppings to a hole in the dry wall and figured the rats were getting in the garage through that hole. Jeff covered it up and continued pulling things off the shelves. He came to the porta-crib, pulled it off the shelf and a ton of droppings came falling out. So he whacked it on the ground again and more droppings came out. Whacked it a third time and a RAT came out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He shreiked like a little girl and ran the opposite way, not knowing what happened to the rat. It literaly took him a good 10 minutes to calm down. We immediately put the porta-crib in the garbage can wondering what baby #4 would sleep in.

The rat appeared a second time. It was hiding in the corner and once again ran the other way. How did this rat get so smart????? Why won't he eat the poison or get its little head snapped off in the trap? We know he's till around. We see signs of his gnawing and chewing, but can't for the life of us determine how to kill it.

As a side note, we knew that we'd have to get something for baby #4 to sleep in. So we went to Babies R Us to check out the baby gear. We just happened to see the sign for the trade in sale that was currently going on. If you bring in an old item you can get 25% off of a new item. Both Jeff and I said, "Too bad we don't have something to turn in......... Oh, but we do!!!" So the minute we got home we took the rat infested porta-crib out of the garbage, hosed it off, and took it to Babies R Us and bought a brand new porta crib.