I THINK I SMELL A RAT!

WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!
PICTURE AT END NOT FOR THE WEAK :-)

So, here is a little bit of what has been going on here over the last week. A friend of mine was having car problems while her husband was out of town so she called to see if JD could look at her car. She lives in our neighborhood and we live quite a way out of town, so I told her to take my car to town that day and not risk it with the kids. She left her car here for JD to look at and drove off in mine. JD and I concluded that it was her Catalytic Converters, because mine had broken down last year and it was acting very similar. She came back later that day dropped off my car and took hers home. Fast forward a few days when they take hers to the shop to have it checked. The mechanic looked at them and stated " No mam, this is not your catalytic converter, you have had a rat under here chewing up all the wires"
When she called me to tell me that, you can imagine my horror. "A RAT, I shouted, what do you mean". She said" well they said they see it a lot this time of year with people who don't drive their cars a lot or cars that sit outside instead of in the garage". Well I considered myself safe, neither one of those applied to me. Ironically enough that same day our garage door quit operating. When JD got home he found that there was a wire loose and fixed it. He also informed me that it wasn't loose that it had been CHEWED... excuse me, did you say chewed. Well what kind of animal can chew thru that? Well we decided that our friends RAT, must have invited himself into our garage while her car was in the driveway.
The next day a few more things were chewed, ropes , car seats. I was not happy at all , with the notion that we had a critter in the garage. JD left to go buy some Rat traps. He came home with these huge sticky things because they were all out of the neck snapper kind. I would have preferred him to be snapped, but I guess stuck would do. Let me also tell you that I did not go into the garage for that 3-4 days unless I absolutely had to. When we had to go get into the car I would open the door peer out and yell " RUN KIDS RUN, GET INTO THE CAR , GET INTO THE CAR..... NNNNOOOOOWWWW, HURRY UP HURRY UP." I got into the passenger side because things are more visible over there and all the traps were on the driver side.
When I would come home from being out, I would sit in the car and observe the area around. Did I see anything moving, did I see anything else chewed up, and then I would proceed with the same. " RUN KIDS RUN KIDS, GET INTO THE HOUSE..... NNNNOOOOOWWWWW, HURRY UP HURRY UP, OPEN THE DOOR, SHUT THE DOOR SHUT THE DOOOOORRRR"
I really don't know what I was imagining this thing to look like, but possible the size of a small dog. I did not care how big or little, I was creeped out, horrified and down right grossed out.


So, JD comes home on Thursday night and walks in the house and proclaims " Do you guys want to see what a dead rat looks like?" I was curious yet a little apprehensive about seeing this thing. I was kind of happy that this little nuisance had been taken out, I mean I was like " heck ya, let me see it, I want to see him dead". I proceeded with caution while the kids ran with reckless abandon to see this awesome sight. I had a hard time looking at it, but wanted confirmation that the sucker was dead, the kids were excited but said " oooohhhhh. poor thing"

I will warn you if stuff like this creeps you out, DON'T LOOK. I had to post it or no one would ever believe it. I had JD take the picture because I just couldn't do it.

This may not seem big to you, but in my mind it is HUGE!

I mean 10 inches from snoot to foot.... OMG !