One when I was young about 12ish. My mom was washing clothes down in the basement and she said kept seeing a lot of movement and every time she would look and stare nothing seemed wrong. So after about a handful of double takes she looks over and there say this HUGE Mickey Mouse rat sitting on the toilet, wet and eating whatever take out he picked up. Even though we don’t use that toilet nor does it have water my mom came up screaming. My dad came to the conclusion that the Rat came from the sewer and only came up that toilet cause it’s not used nor have water in it to “prevent” him. 

So my dad closed the toilet seat cover and put a brick on it and put up traps because also we had an abundance of field mice due to the fact neighbors were killing off the stray cats. 

So about June or July I notice rat droppings but I wasn’t sure at first because our basement and garage leaks and a lot of potato bugs are in there. So one night I saw this HUGE BROWN RAT doing this circus act on the ladder that’s hanging up in the garage. Shortly after I told my mom and she assumed it was a mouse or mice. Mostly because all the can goods and dried food were eaten as well as empty wrappers. Like for noodles, cereal, chips even some vegetables were eaten. And it wasn’t old food it had been recently got. So I thought they came through the mail slot even though we have a relatively new garage door and a heavier weighted mail slot it’s possible for the mailman leave a little mail hanging out for them to latch on to and come in the garage. 

So we brought poison and we plan to put it down but I don’t know what to do really and since my mom’s still in brain surgery recovery she’s not sure either. 

But last week when I went to get the mail I saw this Lil mouse but I assumed it was a baby rat. My mom said it was field mouse but I still disagreed. About 2 evenings ago I went to go get the mail and also run an errand when I went to bend down to get the mail (because it lands on the garage floor) this HUGE BLACK Mickey Mouse RAT jumps at me and takes off into the garage and hides. I didn’t see where he went because I was getting over the mini-heart attacke he gave me. 

But I did notice this!! Every time the mail falls and covers the drain by the garage door (it’s 1 of 2 maybe 3) it has rip marks that match up the drains circle and the drain cant be no more than 4inches wide but the cover is no more than 1 inch, 2 at the most!! And it seems any mail that falls over there gets ripped up or EATEN!! But they won’t eat the right mail though. However they’ve made holes in a box that was put away for storage has holes in the corners and even bags that were filled with cleaners and whatnot have been shredded to bits!! 

Like how do we get rid of them?? Will they eat the poison food?? Should we put food on the sticky traps??? What about the drain, will bleach work?? 

The borough we live in (Wilkinsburg, PA) is lazy and won’t care about the issue until it becomes a serious, uncontainable problem or disaster! There are a buncha vacant houses and any if not all animals live in them. There was even a vacant business building in the downtown area and it was torn down because of rat infestation. The borough won’t clean the extremely clogged sewers so I guess the rats look for some other refuge and come in to the homes by the drain pipes. 

But I’m concerned he’ll come up to the second floor toilet. And because the toilet is OLD (probably came with the 60+ year old house) the toilet seat & covers won’t fit properly and there’s enough gap for him to lift it up and roam around!!

What do we do??

The Bug Doctor