Whatever it is, they are aggressive beasts. After 3 weeks, we thought we were without pests, until this morning, when we heard them overhead.

The pest company came out and found that whatever animal it may be, it had chewed a NEW 4 inch square hole into my attic in order to get back in! Now my fear is that slowly but surely the beasts will eat my entire house!

Did you do your own investigation into whether that feces was really from a rat and not something else? Because i imagine an unscrupulous exterminator would say “rat” to inspire much greter terror than, say, “squirrel”

In response to what another poster said, I would not advise randomly spreading poison around your yard. Even if you don’t have pets, you could kill your neighbor’s pets or other critters. Surely you don’t intend to kill every living creature that crosses your property lines?

When i was living in Vermont years ago, there were 2 very friendly stray cats i regularly interacted with. When i wondered aloud about their disappearance to a neighbor, he told me someone else had put out rat poison and the cats ate it and died.

One night last year i heard an awful lot of loud scratching coming from behind the cabinet in my downstairs bathroom. I keep the door to that bathroom closed. I went to work the next day, my mother stopped by my house to drop something off and went to use the bathroom. She found a chipmunk floating in the toilet. She wasn’t sure if it was dead or alive. She put the lid down, then called to tell me not to be shocked by what was in the bathroom. (Nice, mom, thanks for warning me). I guess there’s no need to say here i was in fact very shocked, and flushed it down the toilet. (Luckily, it didn’t get stuck.) Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to plug up whatever crack or crevice the chipmunk got through without dismantling my entire bathroom cabinet.

It’s amazing how many new ‘roommates’ can squeeze into an extrememly small area. Another thing that never ceases to amaze me is how jumpy I still am whenever I hear something a bit out of the ordinary at home even if it’s on t.v.

There’s a point to that info, honest! LOL

Hornets built a huge nest right up under the highest eaves. Neighbors told me I should go on the porch roof and shoot the nest with that stuff that shoots 30 feet, but, having bad knees, I called an exterminator and, boy, was I glad!

It cost me around $400, but the exterminator told me 1.) to stay indoors with all the doors and windows closed until he told me it was okay to come out and 2.) 3 STINGS FROM THESE BEASTIES WERE EQUAL TO ONE SNAKEBITE! YIKES!!!

When he told me to come out, he had already washed all the mature and maggoty young off the porch roof and my front yard was covered with bodies… and I do mean covered! He had knocked down the nest (which was even bigger than I’d thought) and cleaned up all the carcasses before he left.

He recommended that I have my siding “tuned up” (guys come and make sure all the joints are tight and caulked and it wasn’t something he did) so that bees and wasps and hornets couldn’t get between the siding and the inner walls. I had it done the next week but thought it sounded weird until I read a story about a house where they had to tear out walls because honey bees had gotten between the walls and the honey was actually oozing through the wall… which was how they found out. Yuck.

Now I live on the edge of cornfields and near a big park, so I have a constant battle going with deer, mice, gophers, squirrels, raccoons, possums, chipmunks, groundhogs, etc. On a regular basis, I buy a big bucket (farm-sized) of mouse/rat poison and scatter it around the house, garage, workshop and back yard. (I obviously don’t have any pets or kids and everyone around here keeps their animals inside or on leashes.) Another regular expenditure is for deterrents — have you ever seen what some of these critters can do to plants, shrubs and trees???

I’ve seen all kinds of critters in my yard and have definitely heard some really big critters running across the roof. It still surprised me, when the electricity went out one time ’cause a raccoon fried himself on the power pole right behind my house. Even the guy from the electric company was a bit startled by that one!

To me, exterminators are well worth the money… and so are any measures necessary to make sure that critters stay outside where they belong!