Rats are too clever

As I am a Rat myself, I thought, I know how to catch a rat. Big disappointment.

Here’s the story.
One day in the kitchen the kaki fruit (persimmon) I had prepared for breakfast was partly eaten when I came into the kitchen. As the fruit was on the kitchen working table, my first thought was – cockroaches.
But then by chance I was going through a deep drawer looking for some kitchen equipment when I noticed droppings. That was clearly the hiding place of a mysterious visitor. But how could it enter? Obviously must be during the night.
All indicated it should be the draining pipe of the washing machine.
I set up a night camera and caught the beast.

A war I lost

How to catch a rat seemed easy, I had actually big rat traps, like this one. In my young time in the Beijing Hotel I caught like a dozen mice in my room…

I tried the trap, putting on some kaki fruit. I tried putting the kaki in the middle of a nasty glue surface (used to catch mice or cockroaches). I covered the mechanism of the trap. I made sure the trap was “clean”.

 

All to no avail. The rat came, sniffed at it, even managed to eat a little without touching the glue.
So, I finally gave it up. We secured the water hose of the washing machine in the drain pipe so nothing could move it.
We heard the rat complain for a few days and then it also gave up.
By the way, we are on the 3rd floor. You can imagine how that big rat comes up from the sewer system into our kitchen…