It began with a split-second sighting at 8:30 p.m. on December 30, 2025. It ended 12 weeks later on Thursday, March 19, 2026 with the installation of a new fuse box and wiring that would now be able to provide power to my entire home. In between was a nightmare of escalating horror.

            This is a tail of destruction. You rodent believe how awful it was. I pun so I don’t grind and grit my teeth through tears . . . again.

At 4:30 a.m. on December 31, 2025 – just eight hours after the sighting of what appeared to be a rat scuttling from an adjacent neighbor’s front yard garbage bin to behind my front yard garbage bin — I discovered a foot-long hole with endless depth at the foundation of my home. I suspected a rat and notified my HOA which is responsible for pest control. My suspicions were confirmed two days later when I heard and recorded scratching sounds in my living room wall. I again notified my HOA: “Some animal – I suspect a rat – is alive and well in my living room wall,” I wrote in my maintenance request. 

The next day, Pest Control contractors showed up and placed bait in holes they could see in my yard as well as the neighbor’s. “Man, you should see the HUGE hole in their garbage bin,” said one of the contractors, pointing next door. “Looks like it’s been there for some time, but all they did was cover the hole with concrete pavers. The rats pushed through.” I would learn later that rats had first appeared in the neighbor’s yard in September, four months earlier. The neighbors never reported them. 

The rat race was on.

Two days later, I began to hear what sounded like white noise or hissing from beneath the washing machine in the addition to my home. My maintenance request that day: “I am wondering if water is leaking from possibly rat-damaged PEX pipes beneath my washing machine.”  The Director of Maintenance called and asked if I had a photo of the rats because “you aren’t really sure the noise is from rats, are you? It’s been cold and you didn’t run a heater so your pipes most likely froze and burst.”

“I SAW a rat outside my house two weeks ago!”

“But you don’t have a photo,” he replied.  No, I thought, I didn’t ask the rat to stop and pose. And I did run a heater and yeah, one more thing – you’re an asshole.

For two weeks, I continued to hear the hissing and scratching. Rats were now clearly traversing back and forth inside my living room wall on a route that stretched from my addition to the opposite side of my home. Still, no HOA response. Apparently, asshole still needed photographic evidence, but apparently only of a rat, not a rat infestation as evidenced in the photographs below

Then on January 29, all hell broke loose. I was awakened in my upstairs bedroom at 3 a.m. by a very loud hissing sound downstairs. When I investigated, hot steam was emanating from my addition, spreading a thin layer of glistening water over the walls and floors in my addition and dining room. Delayed because of the paralyzing “Snow-crete” ice storm, HOA emergency maintenance didn’t arrive at my home until 2 p.m. at which time hot water was spewing everywhere downstairs. My home was now a sauna, not to mention a health hazard.

COMING TOMORROW: Ratastrophe — Part Two Just when I thought think it was safe to sleep again . . .

The rat pictured in the top post photo is not one of the rats featured in my sad story. It is a photo of a front-page story in the Health section of the Washington Post about a rat infestation in the entire city of Boise, Idaho.