Rat-a-tat

Rats have completely taken over my house. A few weeks ago, I noticed that there was a hole in the dirt section of one of the cinder blocks on the ground in the front of my house. I figured a rat had done it and put some metal screen material over it. Problem solved I thought. I didn't really pay attention much after that since I thought the rat had found a new place to lay it's head. Well, a few days ago I had a look and realized that there are now 10 or so holes and that rats have even chewed through the screen material!

I went to have a look because I started to notice rats coming in the back courtyard of my house and even saw 1 or 2 inside the house. Jakarta rats are humongous an

d not to be taken lightly. It is pretty terrifying to see one inside your home. I prefer to make lots of noise and try to scare them back outside. Having rats outside your gate eating garbage is a normal sight around here but I have to draw the line somewhere.

So I went outside one night

and watched the holes. I saw 2 baby

rats and 1 large rat enter the holes in less than 10 minutes. Time to take matters into my own hands I thought. Despite having a very large and healthy rat population, rat traps are pretty much impossible to find in Jakarta. There is poison and these sticky papers that the rats get stuck on. Poisoning them isn't such a great idea as you will have the stench of death in and around your home for a long time. The sticky paper works

to an extent if you manage to put it in a place where a rat happens to step on it. Once it does get stuck, you can either let it sit there dying for days on end or kill it yourself. I wouldn't have a problem with killing a rat or 2 if it came down to it but I'd rather not if given the choice.

A friend of mine recommended using a special kind of poison that dries out the bodies and eliminates the stink. I put out one packet in the back and one in the front of the house. They were both devoured within 30 minutes, must be some tasty poison. So I kept an eye out the next day for dead rats. I didn't see any but I didn't expect to since they go to hide when dying. Come that evening, there were even more rats entering the hole (I tried filling the hole with water but it just wouldn't fill up as the water was exiting somewhere else). I made a loud noise to try and scare them out and 3 other large rats hiding in the corner of the yard scurried away and scared me half to death. Later that night, rats were literally clawing at the front door of my house trying to get inside.

I'm now at the point where I don't know what to do. There are potentially countless rats living directly below where I lay my head to sleep and they will just keep multiplying. I'm mulling around with doing one massive Jim Jones style poisoning but I'm afraid that even "dry" poison will not mask that stench. Any ideas?