it was probably from moving the dresser. let's pick up from there. i did get the dresser moved in, i vacuumed everywhere in the laundry, picking up concrete and dirt and everything else, i mopped and lysoled and sprayed and cleaned it all up quite well, and then i crashed hard on tuesday night and i wasn't able to get the garbage out on wednesday morning after all.
on wednesday afternoon, i did another round of vacuuming and lysolling in the laundry, i vacuumed out the closet with the water heater and lysoled in there and then i pulled the stove and fridge out from the wall and siliconed all around it. i did not find a single egg or dropping behind or around either appliance. nothing.
between large amounts of sleeping, i've also now got essentially all of my laundry done, which is why i moved the dresser in. the laundry was somewhat of a bottleneck in finishing the cleaning, but it's now done. the laundry area is also a large walk-in closet and it should be fine for 10 months of the year in a normal year, and better when i plug the hole up with insulation. there's a large clothes rack for tanks and dresses, a nice wood dresser for shirts and sweaters and a cheap organizer for jeans and towels. there's also a large desk for sewing and any other clothes manipulations i may want to do. i do still have my old dresser in my bedroom, and while i lost two of the drawers to warps from the sulfur dioxide in the last apartment, i still have four of the drawers, for socks and underwear and bras and pajamas. that is beside a small desk for writing and some shelving, which bends over to a row of black tables for laptops, external drives, the ip phone, the alarm clock and my typing pc.
the rats are weird. i pulled everything out from away from the walls, looked under the rug, checked everywhere and i could only find a couple of scattered territorial markings. that's it. oddly, they only poop on the cement floor and will even go around the rug to prevent pooping on it. they will not poop on the rug. are they trained? were these pets? i'm still struggling with this. can wild rats show courtesy to their human cohabitants? can they understand you're feeding them and try to befriend you? rats have recently passed the mirror test, putting them in an elite category of intelligence that includes elephants and dolphins, and not cats or dogs. they've apparently been observed using tools to trigger traps. are they smart enough to be polite? listen, you dirty rat. go shit in the wall, and don't tell me you're here, and i won't go in there to get you. but you come and piss on my rug, and i'll drag you out of here by your fucking ears. got it? i cleaned what i did find, lysoled everything and need to stay on top of it. i need to check every few hours and pick up everything i can find, because anything i do find is intended to mark territory.
the rats are coming from the top down; they're roof rats. they live between floors, in ceilings, in attics. they don't want to be down here, they want to be up higher. but i also cannot keep them out, as they are coming from upstairs. the best thing i can do is constantly clean up after them.
i've been exhausted since wednesday night and have not been doing much besides eating pizza, doing laundry and sleeping, but i'm also feeling better now and should get the rest of the cleaning done pretty quickly now that the laundry is just about out of the bathroom. once i get the bathroom cleaned up, the next step is a very long shower, and then i can get back to the writing.