All of God's Creatures?

So God created everything. I certainly believe that, but I do have questions about that!
When we first began our demo and remodel, I was quite concerned about giving rats access to the interior of the house. After all, how do we keep them from coming in when there are holes in the floors and open walls? The answer to that is-we don't.

We are about to hit our one year flood anniversary, and we still have openings rats can get in. We have traps everywhere....literally. We know they get in the attic, although we haven't determined just where, and from there they go down the walls and out the openings at the bottom. There aren't baseboards yet to keep them contained. Steve said he thought the lack of baseboards was the problem, but I wasn't sure I believed him.

Last night I noticed some droppings in our room...ugh...a rat running around is bad enough, but in our room!!! I couldn't sleep imagining all sorts of horrors. Some where around 5 this morning, our daughter knocked on our door to tell us there was a rat in her room. The room she sleeps in is done. There is no way for a rat to get in there except under the bedroom door. She was certain one had been in there, but I was so tired. We told her to try and go back to sleep, yea right..I had been up most of the night dealing with my own fears...and she really thought one was in her room-there wasn't going to be any sleeping going on there.

After a few minutes, we got up to check out the situation. I knocked on her door. She had investigated. She heard something fall and noticed a tootsie roll pop on the floor under her dresser. She didn't think that had been there before, but she didn't see anything else except one rat dropping. She lay back down, and a little bit later she heard something. The sucker had moved to under her bed. We looked around and couldn't find anything else in her room. We walked around the house looking for evidence...nothing...till....I walked in her actual bed room and bathroom. We knew they had been coming in there and had set traps. I turned the light on and saw movement. I screamed (of course) and rat darted. It went under the wall into the hallway and back into the wall on the other side of the hall. Everyone came running. Steve reminded me that baseboards were the issue, the lack of that is. I was pretty grossed out. He set traps out in the path, since rats are creature of habit, and I let Maggie in. Maggie is our bulldog mix huntress. She came in and set about searching. I somehow feel so much safer with her in the house. She is going to get to come in ALOT today!

So...to what purpose are rats again? Annoying I say. Disgusting scavengers who apparently like chocolate...and here is food for thought. Rat gets in and runs around...whole pantry is on shelves in the kitchen while we are finishing up the actual pantry. Trash is right there in the kitchen...with all these food options wide open...it squeezes under a bedroom door to get a sucker????? We are definitely baiting these traps with the wrong thing!! LOL...Steve told Kat to go put her sucker by the trap! ROFL...she found that not so funny.

I am going to be a little gun shy today, looking under, around, by everything...even though my rational mind tells me that he is long gone and won't be back before tonight....hmm...Maggie, here girl...want to sleep with mommy???