This is an issue that, in my experience, women freak out over much more than men do.
Rats are very smart. If you set a trap, you better catch the rat the first time, because if the rat is not caught when the trap goes off, it will not go near the trap again. We tried three different kinds of traps, but missed with all of them and we ended up having to have an exterminator lay down “bait,” as she called it. Poison.
We also had spend thousands of dollars rat proofing the basement. We have a hundred year old house. It had a lot of holes. We could have spend close to ten grand getting the basement parged, but even my wife, the rat fanatic, decided that was too much.
Rats should be killed. They are public health hazards. They should not be caught alive and sent to someone else’s house. And there is always someone else’s house near where you want to empty the trap. Rats are pests. They carry the bubonic plague. They carry a host of other diseases. To leave them alive is a very anti-social act. It is saying that rats are more important than humans.
Where I live, the city has stopped killing rats. There is a plague of rats now. An infestation. They come out of the sewers and into our houses. If you catch a rat, please kill it.