Tails from the Attic

Warning: this post could be perceived as disgusting, revolting, or potentially nauseating. We're talking worse than a Miley Cyrus video, so put your bowl of ice cream down for a minute. I still get the heebie jeebies when I think about it, and part of me can’t believe I am going to dedicate a blog post to it, but I just have to. It has been the source of MUCH mental and even physical discomfort to me for about two months, and that all ended today thanks to my amazingly brave super hero of a husband. So, with your curiosity now piqued, here goes: (*deep breath*).

We recently experienced a rodent problem “a la Ratatouille.” What I mean is this: we had rats in the attic. About 2 months ago as the weather started to turn, every night for about 5 nights straight I could hear a lot of activity in the attic right above the master bathroom. Activties best described as scampering, scratching, clawing, and even squeaking and breathing. I could hear the creature (or creatures) climb up the vines on the side of the house, then enter the attic. Being a light sleeper anyway, I lost loads of sleep, and I even started sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom because I just couldn’t take the sounds and especially the knowledge of what was happening so close to where I sleep. (At 2 a.m. I was blaming Pixar for putting images into my head of the ceiling falling down and hundreds of rats pouring into the house.)

Furthermore, instead of nail-biting paranoia, I prefer to call it female intuition that I just had a feeling the rat was a female, and it was nesting and getting ready to have lots of babies. I. JUST. COULDN’T. HANDLE. IT.

Of course Jason wanted to set big rat traps after the first night of the noises, but he couldn’t find any. He even looked for mouse traps, but figured it would only maim them based on the large sounds we were hearing. So he bought rat poison. Lots and lots of rat poison. He mixed some with grated cheese, some with peanut butter, and he left some plain. He put piles of it in so many locations around the house, I was sure he was killing every woodland creature within a 50-mile radius! Fortunately, the nocturnal sounds ended. Unfortunately, the smell of rotting rodent began.


Because it was about two weeks after we thought we had eliminated the rodent problem, I didn’t put two and two together at first. I could smell something distinctly unpleasant coming from the bathroom from time to time, but I thought it was just due to old plumbing.  I describe the smell as sewer-like, and we kept the bathroom door closed at all times.  Then we got hit with a plague straight out of Genesis: flies, flies, and more flies. They were worse on warm days, but we have had lots of cold weather and rain, so it wasn’t every day. Since we are new to the area, we didn’t know if this number of flies was normal or not. I just thought they were getting in through doors left open. Except it's been so cold that we haven't been leaving doors or windows open, which means that they were somehow getting into the house another way. Finally, I asked Jason if he thought maybe the flies were attracted to something in the attic, and we both came to the realization that a rat could have ingested poison, then gone up to our attic and died. I still thought the odors we were experiencing were a separate issue (because the smell was more like sewage than decay). Then we had another week of cold weather and very few flies.


However, yesterday, I killed at least 35 flies by noon. Jason killed another 30 or so in the evening while I attended a Relief Society dinner. This was so beyond the numbers of flies we had ever had before, that we just knew there must be a dead rat (or something) in the attic.

This is 51 of the flies from yesterday, but we killed a lot more than this--all in one day!

So Today, Jason decided to finally do something about The Problem, since he couldn't handle the fact that even though he may have killed the rats with the poison, they were exacting their little revenge even in death. So he put on gloves, a headlamp, goggles, and got a ladder. I was terrified for him, but I thought he was the bravest man in the world. I even tried to talk him out of it, I was so worried for him.  The second he opened the trap door leading to the attic in the ceiling, the Bad Smell intensified. I almost screamed with the apprehension I was feeling that my husband was going to go up in the attic. You know, by himself! I didn’t have a mask with a HEPA filter for him to wear. I was sure he would get Salmonella or typhus or even The Plague from the fumes up there, so I made him wrap some gauze around his face just to be safe.

Jason, ready to go up into the attic with his empty bag

This is the attic access

Yep, there was a nest, and yep it had a large dead rat in it.

The dead rat is the gray mass in the upper left side of the picture

What we didn’t expect was that he would find not just the one, but FOUR dead rats up there. Two skeletons, and then two very meaty, decomposing specimens. He cleaned up as best he could, then brought a bag of his “findings” down the ladder. I couldn’t even compose myself I was so grossed out! As revolted as I was by the bag of “goodies,” I was very grateful. The Bad Smell from the bathroom went away immediately, and I noticed that Jason was acting like going up the attic to look for dead rats was actually kind of fun! I just don’t get that. I couldn’t have gone up there for all the money in the world.

The bag of "goodies."  The flower on the front is so ironic!  See the makeshift mask I made him wear?

Honestly, is there anything more gross than this?  These are large rats, not little field mice, and I was so disgusted they had been in my HOUSE!

Thank goodness for tough husbands. Although he did tell me that while the rats he cleaned up didn’t bother him, a live spider he saw up there did freak him out a little. Oh well, no one's perfect.