In reply to Brian Fahs.

A funny thing happened last night (two weeks after this post). I woke up to obnoxious crinkling sounds, and flipped on the light to find a pretty big rat scurrying around on our top pantry shelf. We stared at each other for a few second, then he ran up the ceiling beam and out a hole in the wall. I tried to find what he was into, but had no luck, probably because it was 1am and I was tired. We repeated this every hour or so the rest of the night, and I got no sleep.

This morning, though, I was fixing breakfast and discovered what he was so excited about. A crinkly plastic package nibbled open, partly empty, that says "Rat Poison" in big letters on the front. Moral to children: being able to read is pretty important.