Baseboards and rodents

Or the pretty and the pretty disgusting.
I joked about it being fall before we finished the kitchen but it's five months since I started moving things out ahead of demolition and yesterday the baseboards finally went back on. And then the contractor dude smelled what I've been griping about for the past few weeks and opened up the wall. Again. No sign of ratty or his corpse but plenty of urine soaked insulation and wallboard, all of which has been bagged and hauled out. We'll leave it open for a while to make sure the smell is gone and then we can patch it and get the room painted. And that will be the official end of the renovation.

Rats

'Tis fall, and 'tis the season for wildlife. Some people hunt them, me I just try to keep out of their way. This autumn though I've had close encounters with raccoons, chipmunks and field mice but today topped all that. Waiting for me when I came into the drive with the dogs after our walk was a dead rat. A very large flat, dead rat. I tried to convince myself it was a squirrel but no, the tail was very unfluffy.
I knew we had had rats in the garage when we bought this house, there was a big hole in the wall and the smell of rat urine was overpowering, but I could see no droppings or other physical evidence that they were still there, certainly not an actual rat - alive or dead.
This corpse was about 75' from the house and had obviously been run over by a truck or possibly a steam roller. I didn't bother to take a photo but if you want to see one I can recommend this site where they invite you to CLICK ANY DEAD PHOTO BELOW FOR A LARGER IMAGE. Dead photos. Nice.
The kitties are doing their work to keep the local rodent population down but this rat was at least 8" long, plus tail and that's about the size of Maya. I hope they are up to the job because I don't want to meet any live rats around here. And I'd prefer not to see any more dead ones either.