The rats are slowly taking charge

rattus norvegicus
At first I thought I got them all when I tore out the old bathtub downstairs, found their stinking disgusting mess and even saw a few of them peeking out from the soiled fiberglass insulation where they nested. They looked at me with stark animal fear, but still looked somehow like indigent old men in a tenement being demolished. In this case the landlord is the agent of the righteous — they are vile, mean, unclean, freeloaders! Terrible tenants! I show them no mercy.
It’s obvious they’re climbing up the drainpipe from the basement right into the built-in shower/tub enclosure, a crappy thing of molded acrylic from the cheapest source, a perfectly concealed vermin base camp with easy access inside every wall where there’s plumbing. They’re scritching away right underneath me while I’m taking a hot bath, only a thickness of flimsy acrylic away! Not only were the fixtures cheap, the workmanship was so bad I couldn’t wait to tear that shit out, and getting rid of the rats was just a bonus.
But they haven’t stayed gone. In spite of the excellent patch I put in the floor where the drain pipe hole was, they’ve found another way to slink in. I’m finding little stinking pellets of rat shrapnel in all the old places: under the sink, in the closet, in the soffit with the recessed lighting, above the new wash station I crafted where the old one had been. When I hear them right above my head as I brush my teeth — a sickening moment! — I declare war.
I seethe with nightly anger. They start up as soon as the house is quiet. Ive started poking holes in the sheetrock when I hear them scritching behind it, or banging on the wall and yelling at them, ordering them to leave. Such ineffectualities only make me madder and their scritching worse. It’s so bad I can’t fall asleep until I hear them begin their day as mine ends, confirming they’re still there, stoking the fear I harbor deep inside me that they are an invincible force of evil. I sleep with teeth clenched, home under siege, determination steeled but on the run.