Nailed ‘em!
The critter was indeed a rat, yet a small one at that… no Di, I will not get a cat… in a hat.
Ok, I’ll stop now.
But yes, he has been caught. Sharon brought home 3 rat traps. I placed two in the attic knowing it was a long shot that the rat would be hanging around up there on occasion. The third I went directly to the source.
I removed the air vent cover from our bedroom ceiling, unlatched and pushed back the flexible duct pipe, and slipped the rat trap above the ceiling. I tied a piece of kite string to the trap and set the spool on an unstable surface in our room. Two reasons for doing this: 1) it would serve as a telltale that the trap had been moved the slightest bit 2) in case the trap was a bit slow in doing it’s work and the rat tried to drag it off, I would have something to pull it back in.
Thanks Allen for the great advice. The cotton-cheese ball worked like a champ. Marc, the same technique might work for those campaigners…