All this rat infestation talk brings to mind a back-in-the-day story about when I was managing a 130 acre agricultural research station in California.
Some critters were eating some of the yields in our experimental plots, thus messing up the yield data. I instructed my lead technician to determine what it was and get rid of the problem.
The next day, Frank, my lead technician, brought a 20 gauge shotgun to work and headed out to the back 40 with it. I ask him what he was going to do with that shotgun on our research station, he said that the "rats" were eating in plots and he was going hunting.
Although I thought that was overkill, I said go ahead. The next day, Frank brought up some of his kill. DAMN, I never saw "rats" of that size -
(actually what Frank was hunting were rodents called a nutria)
THE END