Er "rat" icate

This story I must admit is a little embarrassing and reveals that I can sometimes be a bit of a ditz. Here in the Northwest we received quite a bit of snow before Christmas and as a result I was stuck at home for several days. I like to stay busy so I decided to do a thorough cleaning of my house. This included going out to the garage and organizing things that were left out since our summer of house painting and yard work. While I was out there I noticed we had a mouse (I didn't see it but they like to leave presents to let you know they are there) so I made a mental note to tell Jeff that we had mice and we needed to get rid of them. However I sorta forgot to tell Jeff. He went to the garage sometime later and found the same presents I did so we got traps and set them up. The traps kept springing but nothing was in the traps. This may be enough information for you guys to guess that we didn't have mice, but I don't have experience with rodents. Since the bubonic plague happened I sort of frown upon rodents in the home and we always had cats growing up (real barn cats). We got bigger traps and poison but by then it was too late, one of them had decided to die somewhere under the house and the odor that filled our house was intense to say the least. There is nothing you can do once this odor creeps in. I tried candles and even putting out plates of coffee grounds to absorb the odor nothing works except for time. We did eventually catch 2 rats in the traps. I'm pretty sure the others that we had ate poison and are now rotting beneath my tub because the smell went away and came back. Now we're not gross people who just let rats rot beneath our house. Jeff took several trips under the house to look for the culprits of the odor but alas the house was recently insulated and who knows where they decided to crawl up and die. I'm not really sure if there is a moral to this story but I have included a picture of my brave "eradicator" armed with yellow dish gloves and a "I so don't want to do this" look.