Editor's note: A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a story about finding two rats who'd made their way into my kitchen, become trapped between the oven and the walls and subsequently, were baked. It provoked such a flood of responses, we concluded that this was not a lone event in Napa, and invited readers to share their own rat tales. It appears we may have as many rats and mice in the Napa Valley as we have grapevines. -- Sasha Paulsen

Sweet tooth

I am 82 years old now, but will never forget a visitor we had on my son's fifth birthday. We had very recently moved to a new home in Napa. We packed for a picnic lunch and went to Conn Dam for the day, leaving the chocolate birthday cake on the kitchen table. On our return we discovered tiny footprints all over the icing. My son tracked the footprints to a small hole under the sink. We patched he hole but decided to pass on the cake. Given an option, my son decided on cake and ice cream at a local restaurant.

-- Esther Haslet

Hundreds of rats

It was an exceptionally warm evening a couple of summers ago; I was working in my home office late in the quiet of the evening. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like the pitter-patter of something running across my roof. As I went outside to investigate, my attention was drawn to a couple of red eyes (an opossum, perhaps?) in one of the back yard trees. As I entered the backyard to investigate further, I aimed my flashlight up in the branches of one of the birch trees near my bedroom window. What I saw next would send ice through anyone's veins: In every branch and bough of that majestic birch were "hundreds" of rats scurrying about -- rats of every size, small, medium and very large. Young and old. One very large happy family of rats.

This was all taking place not five feet away from my wife as she was sleeping peacefully. I notified Sheridan Pest Control, and about three days later, the uninvited guests moved on. So if you ever hear the pitter-patter of little feet up on your roof, reach for your flashlight -- you just might find yourself being entertained as I was.

-- David Marschall

King Rat

We have a closet off a bathroom downstairs where rats seem to like to go and die. Ugh!

(Our house is built down a hill, and the closet goes way back against the hill, and is full of clutter like outdated paper for printing black and white photos (who does that anymore?) wrapping paper, unused Christmas decorations, a carpet sweeper that belonged to my grandmother and so forth. So we never can find the carcasses.

Now that the children are grown and gone, that bathroom gets much less use, so we just tolerate the smell, until the deceased is mummified and the smell goes away. At least that's what I think happens.

When I finally get ready to move and clean out the closet, who knows what I will find? A row of mummies worthy of King Rat's tomb?

Gourmet rats

A family of six rats took up residence in our garage. They raided our dog food and stored probably 50 pounds of it behind the dryer. I'd heard them scratching there, but thought it was the dog or the cat since I had never seen them. That was about to change.

We discovered the dog food stash and cleaned it all out, putting it into a metal garbage can with a lid. The next day, there were all sorts of ratty footprints on the lid! We still hadn't seen the rat. But we knew they were still coming because we could see their footprints and an occasional glimpse of one. We didn't realize how many there were.

We finally saw for ourselves that we had a family of six rats -- one black and white, one brown and white and a couple of regular gray ones, plus some mixture of them all living in our garage, as well as our neighbors' next door and across the street! They feasted on our next door neighbor's dog food and peaches across the street.

So we set about trying to trap them. But we didn't want to trap our dog or the cats, so we used poison. After going through six huge boxes of D-Con Rat Killer, we had a dead rat on our doorstep (which I stepped on with bare feet on my way out to the washing machine), another dead one in our Christmas ornaments in the attic (which we naturally found in December -- months and months afterwards) and another gasped its last breath at our neighbor's while they were saying goodbye to visitors on the front lawn.

The across-the-street neighbors had big rat traps on their fence (since that was the rats' highway to the peach tree) and they caught the other three. However, a couple of them ran down their fence in the middle of a dinner party within sight of all of their guests! The curtains were hastily closed.

So that was the end of the rat family. They unfortunately were probably somebody's pet rats that had escaped or been let loose, but they were certainly well fed at our house until we put our foot down.

We have also had trouble with raccoons, opossums and skunks. We have an outdoor aviary and they are attracted to the birds seed. The skunks are also attracted to the birds and actually dug their way into the aviary and killed most of our daughter's favorite pets. An animal control officer told us it was a skunk and that he could trap and euthanize it, but we opted to make the aviary skunk-proof. We didn't have that problem again, thanks to sturdy wire on all sides and underneath the birds cage.

You may think we live out in the country, but we do not. We live in town in a regular neighborhood. There are lots of wild critters that still come nightly to try and find the free food at the Bennetts'!

-- Wendy & Bill Bennett

You dirty rats

I was born and raised in Napa and have spent all but five of my 52 years in Napa. This past 90 days was my first experience with rats in my home.

As the actor Edward G. Robinson was known for saying, "you dirty rat -- I'm going to get you!"

My rat tale starts with their consumption of the spark plug wires of my garaged 1994 Jaguar convertible ($150 to replace). We tried setting large rat traps, but that did no good; the critter or critters moved on.

We next noticed chewed-up particles on our carpet. We blamed our 3-year-old golden retriever, but my wife noticed that the chewed articles were being found on the carpet, directly under the ceiling vents in every upstairs room of our home. You see, the rats decided our attic made a fine home and that the plastic duct work and insulation connecting our vents were fun to chew on.

After using duct tape to patch all the vent work, we had had enough. We knew the risks of baiting the rodents (dead carcasses in the walls or attic) but we couldn't let them eat us out of house and home.

We contacted our exterminator (the excellent Clark's Pest Control), who baited the pesky critters and sure enough, one or all died in the wall between our laundry room and garage. Well, the stench was enough to gag a maggot. We tried a deodorizer, ionizers, "Ratgone," a few other sprays and scent removers, but not much worked.

Finally after about a month, the stench has gone away and it appears the rats have as well. Our home and cars are back to normal.

Someone told me that Napa is one of the worst Bay Area communities for rats. I wouldn't be surprised.

I guess Edward G. Robinson died too soon -- we could have used his help!

-- Larry & Vickie Gomez

A mother-

daughter ritual

Every winter, along about this time, the rats pack up their belongings and family and move from the vineyards into our attic. We always make the discovery when one of our dogs marches around the house with a big fat rat firmly held between its teeth, its long tail dangling.

This year it began the usual way. "Come quick," my daughter screamed. "I need your help." Sure enough, when I came into the room, Doris Dog stood staring at me with a very large rat hanging from her mouth.

"Ugh!" I muttered and quickly grabbed the taco tong and a hunk of cheese. Quick as a flash, I grabbed the rat with the taco tongs while shoving the cheese into Doris Dog's mouth. I wasted no time in introducing Mr. Rat to the garbage can's smorgasbord and slamming down the lid.

The sight of the rat was the signal it was time to put rat poison in the attic, since rats and mice are notorious for chewing the electrical cords. There was no time to waste.

Every year, it's the same ritual. Daughter Bright stands on a chair. And while I hold the crawl hole lid up with the broom handle, Bright pokes her head and shoulders through the hole in order to throw the packages of poison from one end of the attic to the other.

It has also become part of the ritual that the minute Bright sees a rat, she screams, then we both scream, and before Bright can climb down off the chair, I drop the attic lid on her head ad take off running for my life. Much cursing follows, world that would have caused me to wash out Bright's mouth as a child. But at 53, she is bigger than me.

Of course, all the while, I have to stifle myself to keep from laughing hysterically in order to say "I'm sorry! The broom slipped."

Well, here it is another winter and another rat season. But so far, the only rat I've seen is the one that got squished trying to cross the street getting to our house. But never fear, more rats will follow so Bright and I can repeat our traditional winter ritual.

Web rescue

It started when we were watching TV and heard something in the wall.

My husband became obsessed to get these invaders. We used sticky traps. Don't ever use these. They are cruel. A quick death is kinder. We had one stuck and I'll spare you the details but the rat, was screaming; yes, rats scream. It was horrible. My husband put it to rest with a fishing spear. Don't ask why, I think in the frenzy it was the nearest thing he could grab to put the rat out of its misery.

Next he tried poison. Well, one rat was outside, he looked dead but wasn't. To my surprise it was cute. It didn't look like one of those big scary city rats but a cute wine country rat. It was shiny black with cute little white markings and was dying. I felt sorry for it. I called my husband at work who said, in no uncertain terms, "Kill it." I couldn't. It looked like someone's pet, poor thing. Well, I go do errands and my husband comes home later and says "Where's the rat?" The little varmint rose from the dead and took off. I was horrified, what if it went back in the house to die. We wouldn't know until we could smell it. Well, fortunately (for us, not the rat), we found it outside by the garden, dead. Even dead it looked cute.

After about six weeks of this and other incidents, including spotting a rat in the house, my husband hit the Internet. He found this Web site: www.ratkill.com. They have videos, T-shirts and coffee mugs, they have a chat site to share rat stories!

He got a lot of good advice and we were able to rid ourselves of the rats. It's been about two years now.

-- Ann Gilleran

And a mouse tale

We live in the country so we see our share of birds, wildlife and little critters. The cats and the hawks all do their best to keep the mice and larger rodents down but occasionally one or two get through these natural defenses and then we have a mouse problem. Since I am the only male in a household of five women it is my assigned duty to take care of these invaders, usually it involves me setting traps, etc.

One morning while preparing my breakfast in the pre-dawn dark I caught just a hint of movement out of the corner of my eye. It happened to be up by the toaster on the countertop, and since I didn't actually see anything I kept on with my preparations. I was using our new-to-us, rebuilt toaster that my Finnish/electrical engineer-with-farming-roots father-in-law had given us, and, of course, there was one knob missing -- you don't find these treasures in someone's garbage for no reason! The missing knob left a convenient 1-inch hole in the side of the toaster.

As I pushed down on the lever to send my toaster into action I felt a more difficult than usual resistance but being strong as well as determined to have my toast I thought nothing of it. There was soon the smell of singed hair along with the toast but since my olfactory sense has never been the best I just passed it off as a possibly a new type of rye bread or something. I ate my toast but that was the last toast I ever ate out of that toaster. Soon I discovered that my free toaster had actually been a mouse crematorium, my first response was to put the toaster in the trash bin and to swear off toast for a while, but soon my father-in-law found this perfectly good toaster in the trash bin and having grown up on a farm during the Depression, he Š

-- Jay Gardner

A rat with taste

A couple of months ago, we found rat droppings in our shed. We took care of that right away. Spring trap: Do we use peanut butter or cheese? So we used one of each. We caught the little devil on peanut butter (my husband says it was the cheese that caught him, but it's my story so I'm sticking with peanut butter).

At Christmas time, my granddaughter and I made a gingerbread house. I had it displayed on my glass table in the living room for everyone to see. I'm cleaning the house, dusting, when I notice some of my gingerbread house was missing: the pretzels and the edges of the house. My glass table was kind of marked or spotted; I couldn't quite figure it out, but could only blame it on the dog. About a week later, my husband noticed more rat droppings in our shed. Did our past rat leave family behind? So we set out more traps, but couldn't get any of them. Now, my daughter had her "stuff' stored in there ready for her big move. She gloved up with three -- not one, but three -- pairs of gloves to go through her "stuff." There, in one box, was towels; the rat had nibbled on them and had made its nest. Well, let me tell you, anything that the rat might have touched, she canned it. Towels, George Foreman grill and who knows what else.

Once my husband found the droppings in the shed, I said, "Wait, do you think it was the rat that ate my gingerbread house?"

He said, "No way, we would have seen some evidence."

Christmas is here. All the family is at our house, but no one mentioned a rat, only that we thought the dog had nibbled on the gingerbread house. I had gotten a box of chocolates with alcohol in them as a gift (they looked like little Champagne bottles). It had been sitting on my kitchen counter for a while, and when I was tired of looking at it, my husband moved it into our spare bedroom on top of a case of wine. Well, that next morning, he went into the room and found the rat had gnawed on the cardboard of the case, torn open the plastic on the chocolate and taken one-and-a-half pieces. Great, now we have a drunken rat who loves sweets in our house. My husband immediately went to OSH and bought every type of trap. It's war! The funny thing was that he said that he had never seen so many traps displayed at the store. He asked one of the clerks, "Have people been buying a lot of traps lately?"

The clerk said, "Seems like they have." What's up?

Now, we have the traps -- several -- in and outside our house. We even have the baby monitor on so we can hear if they're intruding (don't worry, we have no babies in the house). Two of our neighbors have had rats recently, too. All I can say is that I live in Browns Valley and am too embarrassed to give my name. Just be careful when looking under your bed tonight.

On the trail (or tale) of an opossum

We've had rats in the attic, mice in the kitchen and raccoons on the deck, but nothing beat the opossum in our bedroom. I heard some rustling at the bottom of the closet and started to panic when I realized all the cats were accounted for. I peered in with a flashlight, praying it wasn't a rat, and was actually relieved when I recognized the round, pink nose and coarse white fur as an opossum. Fortunately, in my youth I'd had a personal relationship with a rescued opossum at a wildlife volunteer job; unfortunately, this put me in the position of being the resident expert in the house, and therefore in charge of getting it back outside.

My first plan was highly unsuccessful. I set up a sturdy cardboard box containing a bowl of cat food at the front of the closet door, wedged in so the critter couldn't possibly escape, and went to bed. Late that night I heard scuffling and crunching in the box, but when I screwed up the courage to look inside in the morning, no opossum. Apparently, the meal had made him (or her) thirsty, so he'd gone to the bathtub for a drink, leaving little footprints that enabled me to track him to his new hiding place behind the toilet. I put on thick gardening gloves, took a deep breath, and gently lifted it up by its tail, fearing the needle-like teeth and sharp claws ... but this guy was no fighter, and in true opossum style, he tucked himself into a ball and played dead. I sent him back to his element, confused but well-fed.

On a positive note Š

One weekend afternoon at my parents' Alta Heights home, I noticed the cats were acting strange. They were both crouched in front of the refrigerator, chins on the floor, tails whipping back and forth in rapt attention. Flashlight in hand, I investigated.

Two beady red eyes gleamed back at me. It was a tiny white rat. I'm as squeamish as the next Napan when it comes to the big brown river rats that come with river-adjacent living, but this was a clean, white baby rat. It had charm.

Everyone checked it out -- the kids, the parents, the grandparents -- and we decided to see if we could coax it out. We put down a Ritz cracker and backed off. After a short time, the rat snatched the cracker and went back to the safety of its hiding place. We put down a bit of water in a lettuce leaf. The rat seemed much obliged.

My sister and her husband decided they'd keep it as a pet for their kids, so they got a humane trap and got the little varmint out from under the fridge. It was clear she had been somebody's pet -- wild rats are not known for their clean white fur -- but after canvassing the neighborhood, no one appeared to be missing her. So they kept her.

We call her Sweetpea and she is a sweet pet. She even made a wary friendship with the cats.