If it smells like a rat, looks like a rat, it must be a...

For the past couple months, we would occasionally get woken up by the pitter pattering, scratching rats running around in the walls of our condo.

We had the pest company come by and try to catch/kill or otherwise keep the rat out of our walls, but after a month, multiple visits, climbing in the attic and multiple rat traps located around the exterior of our building, the rats continued to show up.

At least the scratching provided for hours of entertainment for our cat Emmy who would jump into the bathtub and listen to the rat scurrying around behind the walls.

Last week we had some contractors working up in the attic replacing damaged rafters which had been eaten away by our other pests, termites. Later that night, we noticed an aweful stench when walking under our attic access hole.

The contractors mentioned that they had seen some rat poop in the attic, so I figured that the rat must have died and was now crawled into some cranny and was now rotting away to the dismay of my nose.

So I crawled up there and started sniffing around, trying to isolate the source of the stench. I was having some problems finding it, so I asked my friend Scotty to climb up and help.

As soon as he stuck his head up and turned his head, he nearly fell down the ladder after catching a particularly nasty sniff. I ripped up a board and found it, put it in 3 plastic bags and threw it away.

I hope no more rats decide to die in the attic!