i have still seen no evidence of rodents in my apartment, but i went into the laundry today and noticed a few holes in the ceiling and some pasta, apparently from upstairs, on the floor. i double checked my own pasta and they have yet to get into it, or anything else. while i'm certain these are roof rats, and have had some roof rat droppings fall from the ceiling, i also noticed what appear to be smaller mouse droppings in the laundry, which i have seen before, but have never seen in my apartment. i'm once again convinced that there are both large roof rats between the floors that i'm largely being successful in getting rid of, although they're continuing to do damage, and a house mouse in the laundry in the basement that seems to appreciate me fighting the rats and i have to concede may, despite no evidence of it, be existing partly on minimal food crumbs left in the kitchen, and is getting in and out of the laundry. if the mouse is very small, i might be underestimating it.
i don't know how to make sense of a rodent gnawing through the jeans at my knees without biting me. cats will do something called knead you, which freaked me out the first time my grandmother's cat did it to me, but is a sign of bonding. apparently, rodents will gently bite as a sign of affection, which is again consistent with everything else. but i can't have that. was it trying to move me? was it trying to see if it could eat me by taking a bite first?
as i have seen no trace of rodents outside of the laundry area, i'm going to address this to start by completely sealing off the laundry area, totally, first by plugging up any potential entry with silicon. i'm going to need to order that tonight, as i'm just getting through my fourth container, and i only expected to need a couple. i'm going to buy about ten tonight and have them delivered tomorrow.
for now, i'm almost done cleaning my boxspring and should be able to clean the rest of the bedroom up quickly after that. it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's a mix of coffee and chocolate soy, so i want to get as much out as i can. i don't want to attract bugs.
as for the rats, i have heard them migrate out of my space and into the upstairs and i think they're entirely out of here at this point. i can still hear them in the upstairs bedroom, in the upstairs kitchen and in the staircase to the top floor unit, but it's distant, and they aren't scratching around in the bathroom anymore.