I don’t have any of my own that I can think of right now, but Amazon Floozy Goddess started this thread, which I think bears mentioning. Kudos, AFG.
Once I lived in a house with field rats so bold, they would jump up on the counter and eat leftovers while staring at you! They had to die.
So we bought rat poison that was supposed to make them go outside. It was sad, really. I watched one die of a hemorrhage on the open door of the dishwasher. Way icky! Then I thought they were gone.
A couple of days later a strange smell started emanating from the laundry room. “Oh, God, please no,” I thought. I climbed up on the washer and peered into the shadows. The smell was indescribably putrid. I spotted the bloated thing.
My husband was gone, and I couldn’t move the washing machine. So I got a broom, and while simultaneously retching and gagging, poked and pushed the dead rat around the back and through the small space between the wall and the side of the washer, praying it wouldn’t pop!
I was successful, and swept it into a garbage bag.
AGGHHH!!
Growing up, I lived in a somewhat gappy house that was close by a river. Usually, mice would come in every fall and spring and make themselves at home.
I remember getting ready for school one morning and I felt something in my boot when I tried to put it on. When I turned it over and tapped it, out tumbled four tiny, hairless pink mice. I compulsively checked my shoes for several years afterward, or, preferably, didn’t wear any at all.
One day, we didn’t get so lucky, and we were eating breakfast when a river rat the size of a small cat darted across the kitchen floor along the baseboard by the kitchen sink.
I screamed and jumped out of the way, and my mom went into full ninja mode.
With lightning-quick reflexes, she grabbed a log from next to the woodstove and pinched the rat between the cut plane of it and the wall.
The rat wiggled and squiggled, trying to get free, squeaking and trying to turn around. With her full attention on not getting bitten by the greasy black rat, she flailed around with her free hand, trying to lay something to hand that would take care of the problem. She found it.
With a grimace, she raised the hammer up and smacked the front face of the log as hard as she could, actually popping the rat.
…I didn’t finish breakfast.
Oog. I feel a bit green in the face.
When I was a kid of about 10 years old, my family had a Welsh Terrier, a dog breed with a reputation for being fond of killing rats. A rat decided to move in next to the sliding glass door and would eat the bird seed fallen from the bird feeder. We would hear the dog going nuts when he saw the rat, but the rat apparently had thought he was safe…until one day…I saw the rat eating the bird seed and released the dog. I swear the rat’s eyes bugged out of its head and it let loose a scream that was quickly cut short. It took some effort to get the dog to drop the rat and then I delivered the coup de grace with a shovel. Great fun for a 10 year old boy!
Me, too. I’d love a rat, but then, so would my kitty boys.
I have had several pet rats, and they were delightful little critters. The best was a female named Honey. She was smart enough to come when called by name. She loved to sit on my shoulder, and if something frightened her, she would dive into my hair to hide.
I made a tiny harness so that I could take Honey outdoors on a leash. She would skitter along the sidewalk sniffing at everything. I imagine that my neighbors looked out the window and muttered “There goes that looney woman walking her rat again,” but we crazy pet ladies can’t be too concerned about what the neighbors think, or we’d never have any fun.
My wife used to live in the Adams Morgan area of D.C., an area well-known for the rat problem. Like others here, her back door faced onto an alley that sported a Korean restaurant’s kitchen and an abandoned building on the other side.
There were lots of rats.
One evening, she was sitting at home with her roomies, watching the local news, when they ran a “Special Segment” on the growing D.C. rat problem. To make the story more exciting, they had a person reporting “from the scene of an area well-known for infestations.” Imagine my wife’s mortification when she noticed the reporter standing right beside her car in the alley behind her house. With the license plate thoughtfully pixeled out.
I had to work with rats on a lab experiment in college and learned to love the little critters. Always wanted to have one or two as pets, but my SO has threatened lawsuit and mutters about division of community property every time the subject comes up.
I knew a guy in Berlin who had trained rats and he had them doing some really neat tricks. They were also trained not to go near the carpeting in his living room, and it was funny to see them all standing around the side of the room and one would put a paw on the carpet and the others would watch and…I swear it is true…“giggle” when the guy would pretend to head towards the brazen rat who put his paw on the carpet.
Last bit of trivia - in the original film Willard, there was a story about the rat trainer and how he had his teenage son strip down, cover himself with honey and lay in the bathtub and the trainer would put hundreds and hundreds of baby rats in there and let them lick the honey off. Eventually, the trainer had several hundred trained rats that would leap on a human on command (thinking they were going to get honey). It looked very realistic on screen to see these leaping rats all jump on an actor. Ernest Bognine was quoted in a magazine saying even after many takes, he was only once accidently nicked in the arm by a rat who slipped.
Sigh - wish I could have a pet rat or two or nine, but in reality, they don’t live all that long and I would get too attached and then get really depressed when they died.
This really made me laugh.
I have two lop eared bunnies. Their favorite treat is banana. I give them each a piece before bedtime. The girl (Lily) always runs over to the over side of the room to keep her treat away from Charlie. But he scarfs his and then runs over to try to eat the rest of hers.
Animals have no table manners.
Thanks for the mention. 
Bettina is still not allowed onto my desk, btw. 
I used to have three hairless rats, so I like the little critters. But in college, I lived in a dorm that shared space with a dining hall, and therefore had all manner of pest issues. My roommate and I had constructed a lounging area in our room out of two folding mattresses sandwiched together and shoved in the corner near the radiator. When we noticed a bad smell near the mattresses, we thought it was simply something coming through the vent, and as it would wax and wane we didn’t think much of it. Until one day when we went to clean in the corner and found a very squished and at this point mummified mouse pressed between the mattresses, the unfortunate victim of someone sitting forcefully in the lounge area.
I’ve also had to clean up the remnants of two rats we found dead in our yard; the victims, we believe of a pair of mongooses that lived on the other side of our house. One was completely missing its head, and the other was barely recognizable as a rat.
When I was a kid, I lived in a slummy flat in an alley. Of course, we had our share of rat and mice and roach problems. So one night I did my homework like a good kid, left it on the desk in the living room, and went to bed. The next morning I experienced a truly traumatic experience. My carefully written homework was eaten through by a rat, probably the one I’ve seen running around. My parents heard my howls and tried to console me. My dad wrote me a note to give to my teacher:
Dear Teacher,
Nivlac’s homework was eaten by a rat.
Sincerely, Nivlac’s father.
Betcha my teacher never saw that excuse before. After that I always put my homework away in a secure place every night. One good thing about my youthful encounters with little pests – to this day, they don’t bother me. One of these days, maybe I’ll share with you my cockroach stories.
Best one I can think of is my friend’s house.
Back when we were kids, my friend’s parent’s house had a rat problem. There were rats in the attic. So his parents called the exterminators, and what they did was seal off all the exits of the attic, preventing more rats from entering the attic and letting nature take its course for the poor victims trapped in their lofty tomb.
Some time later they had to go into the attic for something, and were disturbed not by the rat corpses themselves, but the obvious signs that the rats had resorted to cannibalism while trapped up there! :eek:
Officialy manky means dirty, but feel free to use it in place of icky and ooky too. I married a Scot, he came complete with that word. The child loves it when I screech “clean your manky room!” 
Oh, yep, Sullivan says in his book (Rats) that this is very common. Rats typically do this when the food supply runs low but the population is still high (or too high for the food supply, anyway).
Iew.
Mrs. Furthur
<rest of story snipped>
Calm kiwi , I nearly wee’d in my pants at this one, I was laughing so hard.
Shooing a rat? Honestly.
Mrs. Furthur
I’ve always had a thing for rats, and in fact was disappointed with Sullivan’s book because it didn’t have enough information about the rats themselves. I mean, the focus was on man and rats and their problems with them, whereas I wanted more ratty goodness.
I used to have a pet rat. I never saw the big nasty kind until I was an adult. My first rat of this type was spotted in Central Park in New York when visiting. Broad daylight. I was as thrilled as if I’d seen a celebrity.
I forgot to mention this incident which concerns a mouse but hey, that’s close enough for this thread.
well, folks, gather’round, and let oll’ trupa tell you a tale…a tale of single combat, of feats of arms, a hunting tale, of daring feats and blood-curdling dangers…
It all began one Christmas, back when I was in high-school, and still living with my Mom, who was then working part-time as a nurse. It was a Saturday morning a few weeks before Christmas. I had brought the decorations down from the attic, and we had set-up our tree, little Swiss village, nativity scene, pine boughs, etc etc. Mom and I were sitting down, admiring our handiwork, when the fake-snow rug at the foot of the tree began quivering. It was covering the various boxes in which the decorations were stored, now used as a base on which rested the tree and nativity scene.
A rodent head pops up, and does a quick periscope scan. Upon seeing two startled humans, it re-submerges, and runs under the furniture. We catch a fleeting glance of a long tail, dark fur, big incisors, then, nothing. Searches come up empty. But we know it’s now inside the perimeter, somewhere in our own house, lurking, watching, waiting for it’s chance…
The household goes into a tense alert mode, ready to galvanize into action at the first sighting.
Mom has to go in for an evening shift, leaving me alone in the house with my aging father, recovering from a stroke. He won’t frighten easy. Our hidden guest isn’t as bad as the Fokkerwulfs and Messerschmitts he used to go head-to-head with in Italy in '43, him and his trusty Bofor gun, but he’s just learnt how to put one foot in front of another for the second time in his life a few months ago. If the balloon goes up, he’ll be as much help as a girl-scout at a grizzly bear wrestling match. I’ll have to cover him, too.
Dinner passes without incident. Dad is now downstairs, showered, in his PJs, comfortably installed in from of Hockey Night in Canada. I go into the kitchen to finish cleaning up after dinner. As I bring the dishes to the sink, the skittering clatter of small, sharp claws comes from behind the microwave on the counter. My first thought is containement. I can’t let him get out of the kitchen. I race to close both doors to the kitchen. Fist the swinging door to the dining room, then the French doors to the living room. As I stand outside the door, my heart pounding, I don’t recall seeing the creature run out. I think I may have succeeded in trapping it inside.
I go to the garage to get ready. Steel toed construction boots, bite-proof, good for crushing bones. Hard hat from my days in the refinery. Heavy leather work gloves, hopefully bite-proof. I really don’t have any leather coat or jacket that could protect my arms & neck. I’ll have to chance that. I want to bring a hockey stick, a 9-iron, a softball bat anything hard and long, but he’s in the kitchen. No hard clubs. I felt like the space marines in Aliens II, where they have to hand in all their ammo because they were inside a nuclear reactor. Finally I compromise on a stout straw broom. It would turn out to be a fateful decision.
I go back up to the kitchen. One of us isn’t coming out alive. It’s now the Thunder-Kitchen. Two go in. One comes out.
I open the door, dart inside, quickly close it behind me, trying to look everywhere at once, eyes wide, heart pounding, adrenalin flowing, holding my weapon at port-arms, bristles up, thinking I’ve never killed anything this big before
All looks quiet, no sign of movement. I approach the microwave, location of the last sighting. It’s on the counter, against the wall near a corner with another wall. Between the side of the microwave and the other wall, a row of square metal containers for tea, coffee, sugar, flour are lined up.
A very faint sound, almost nothing, a barely perceptible brushing, from somwhere near the corner, probably up on the counter. I reach out with my left hand and shove the microwave hard against the wall, hoping to trap and crush him at the same time. A squeal of outrage, a blur of movement on the sugar and flour tins, and then everything freezes, goes into Matrix-like “bullet time”. The creature has jumped off, going up, not down, straight at me, not away alongside the wall; it looks like it’s going right for my face, or my throat. I see it clearly for the first time, dirty brown fur, white splotches, either from a mottled coat or from the flour, round, black, malicious eyes, wide open jaws, a suprising number of teeth, and long, sharp incisors coming at me like a rocket. Now I’ve always sucked at sports. A childhood of poorly controlled asthma earned me countless hours of bench warming, the contempt of gym teachers, and such a lack of skills catching or hitting a thrown ball, hard or soft, that I became the first student umpire in the intra-mural softball league. If I’d had a bat, or a golf club, or any of the weapons I’d really wanted, well, I don’t know what would have happened. Actually, I do know: I would have missed it. And gotten at least some painful stitches, rabies shots; who knows? Maybe the damn critter would have gotten lucky and bit something important. But as this rodent, cornered, furious, fighting for it’s existence, continued the ballistic parabola it had begun by launching itself at my throat, my broom became a great big tennis racket. I swung wildly, screaming a primordial wordless cry of fear, outrage, naked aggression and bloodlust. The bristles connect with the airborne rodent, swiping it off it’s trajectory, sending it crashing into the microwave door, then bouncing down onto the floor, momentarily stunned. Three blows with the side of the broom later, it’s back is broken, skull crushed, the dead rat lay bleeding from it’s ears and mouth on the kitchen floor, a foreleg still twitching erratically. The whole thing took maybe 15 seconds, but I was breathing harder than the last time I “had” to try to run a whole kilometer in gym-class, before they figured out the whole anti-inflammatory thing about asthma, and the best broncho-dilators they had were pills that worked fine so long as all you did was sit at a desk.
When I can talk again, I call Mom at the nursing home, but I get only the receptionist. She asks if she can take a message. “Yeah”, I say, smug from, for once, having won a fight, “nothing urgent. Just tell her our guest is dead”.