Rats!

The other morning I woke up with Otis dancing across the bed. Opening one eye, I could see him running back and forth over our legs while looking up at the ceiling. Then I heard something being dragged across the ceiling in the attic. Gross! We must have mice or a rat up there, I thought. How disgusting. And I fell back asleep with Otis' little frolic continuing unabated.

This happened every morning around 5:00 for several days. No scampering sounds, just this heavy dragging sort of sound--a miniature ball and chain, in my fantasy. I heard some frantic leaping about over the kitchen ceiling one morning while I was cooking breakfast. Otis heard it, too, and started pacing the floor, looking up at the ceiling as though something was about to drop.

Last night, we heard two odd scraping sounds in the wall of the living room. Sam froze as his eyes rolled toward the sound. Yuck. We really must have a colony up there. It's pretty horrible to contemplate, but it surely is consistent with the quality of this house! Rats! I told Sam that we probably should put some traps up in the attic. But neither of us was too keen on going up there with flashlight to lay the traps down, much less bring them down with wriggling, terrified, chattering rats caught in the glue traps like hideous statues. To drown them in a bucket is even worse to contemplate. So we didn't do anything about them.

This afternoon when we walked into the house, an unearthly smell met us. It was like Sam's dirty socks, even ten times worse. It was in our bedroom, I thought. So I wrenched off all the sheets and the comforter and did a huge laundry. How could we have been sleeping in such a bed with such a stench? We must be more piggy than I thought. Sam came in the room and began sniffing about. He stopped short by the closet. "It's a dead rat in the attic, I think," he said gravely. Sure enough, I think it is, too. I pray that it is a mouse--the smell will be gone in a couple days.

My aunt called tonight and told me to put cups of vinegar around the room. "It will smell strong for a couple days, but it will absorb the odor." I'm prepared to hose it into the attic. But I don't want to go up there. Oh no...
Does anyone know how to get that smell out of the house?