Rat in the house

 I have a dog, and a double-slat dog door for our severe winters.  Everybody says "Aren't you worried something will come in?"  I say "Really, I have a dog."  Except that Roxie makes friends with all the little animals in the backyard.

This happened suddenly two days ago when I noticed that stuff was being pushed out from under the freezer, like a piece of broken glass.  Hmmm.  Then yesterday I was working down there, when there was a fuzzy streak of gray zooming along the back wall.  Ok.

I put out a big rat block (the bucket is almost empty, they are banned now), and it disappeared the next day.  No mouse could move it.  Then every rat trap I have was put out.

Today, I walk into the laundry room, and there is this huge mouse (I really didn't think it was a rat), lying still by the dog's water dish.  "Ha, you made a pig of yourself with the rat poison, and now you are dead.".  I called over everybody to look, but the dog didn't come.  She was mourning her friend, or feeling guilty.

Fine, I got a dog-poop bag, and grabbed it like picking up a poop.  I had jumped all around to see if it would move.  As I grabbed it, it let out a big squeak, and all I thought of was my finger being bit off.  I jumped back, and the baby rat (which I now identified because of the dragging big tail), walked as slow as molasses back under the freezer.  I just watched.

I now conclude it ate the rat block, and was sleeping it off.  Obviously, the dog and rat have an agreement.  Maybe the dog even brought it in, because it was cold.  Who knows?

Now, I'm waiting for it to go to the traps for a medically assisted death.  If not, I run the vacuum under the freezer, which is raised a bit for when we had floods.  I've put traps all over the outside.  It could have come from bringing in the Christmas ornaments from the outside shed.  But, it had poops the size of baked beans, and nothing was upstairs.  I'll stick with the dog conspiracy.

ps. we have now concluded that the rat-mouse came in the dryer vent, which is stainless steel slat, but the neighbours had a chipmunk come in that way.  I have ordered special screens.