They probably left you a Christmas present like their own Dropins behind your stove or inside of it.

I thought it was Stuart?

We had a few in the basement back in early November. I managed to capture about 8 with peanut butter and traps. We haven't seen any since the week after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping they're gone...

I have three armed and ready to go under the sink and some poison in the garage.

I moved back to the city earlier this year, and my apartment is on the ground level. I'm always concerned that a rat or a squirrel will get in the garage which is attached to my apt, but there are plenty of alley cats that keep them away

There was a slice of pizza of top of my mailbox the other day, and I could only surmise that it was left by a squirrel. I couldn't imagine some fool in the neighborhood doing that, and the way pizza slice was shaped looked like it was it was eaten in little bites.

Could've been a homeless guy.

I once lived in a house that had rats. I took a handful of diet pills and sat up all night with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol waiting for them to poke their heads out of the woodwork. By four A.M. I was seeing any number of rats, many of them Day-Glo orange and wearing ballet costumes. This technique is not very effective.

Traps are not very effective either. If you check on your rat traps in the middle of the night, you're liable to see the rats using them as Nautilus machines.

However, while researching this book I came across another method of getting rid of rats. It appears in a volume called Household Discoveries, Encyclopedia of Practical Recpies and Processes, by Sidney Morse, published in 1913. I have no idea if this works, but it does sound like fun:

Catch one or more rats in a wire cage. Take a pronged stick...wedge the folk just behind the animal's ears and pin him firmly to the floor. Roll a bit of newspaper into a tight cylinder, set fire to one end and with the lighted end singe the hair from his back... Fix a small paintbrush on a long stick...apply a coating of phosphorescent mixture, slightly warm, to the animal's back, and release him next to his hole. Just what impression is produced by what appears to be the ghost of a departed rat reappearing in his own haunts would be hard to say, but those who have tried the experiment report that no rats remain in the vicinity to give an account of their sentiments.