A couple of years ago, I saw one on my back deck and my dog went ape shit! I told the wife it was a mouse (fkin big mouse!) otherwise she would never have gone on the deck again... literally! Any how's sometime later when I opened my grill, the foooker shot out the back and when I took the grill plates off this was obviously where it had been 'living' !! So at least I knew this now and told the wife that the "inlet suppression valve" had gone and I had sent off for a new one but it would be weeks (the obvious question of why don't we just buy a new grill came up but after 27 years, the wife knows better, once I get something in my head nothing is gonna sway me!) Which gave me time to devise a cunning plan!!
I bought the biggest mouse/rat trap I could find, and believe me this was huge, asked around the good old boys in the area and baited the trap with …………..peanut butter, apparently the little bastards go crazy for the stuff. Nothing happened for a couple of days as I checked it each evening. Then when we were all out on the deck one Sunday afternoon enjoying the evening Georgia sun, there was a very loud snap/crack and the wife said, "what's that".. to which I replied, it was just the metal plates contracting after being in the sun all day, nothing to worry about! (I was an Engineer in a previous life and that sometimes helps the debates with my lovely wife!) As soon as the sun was down, I went out to 'clean my grill' ready for the part arriving that week ;-)
and …………….. there it was, a huge horrible fucking rat with a badly broken back!! I hastily put it into a bin liner (using the grill tongs, which I subsequently also threw away) and chucked it into the trash (bin :-)!!)
to this day the wife doesn't know we ever had a rat, lone one at that it seems as I have never seen one since, plus my dog is a demon and would seriously go for them!
So very long story short, buy the biggest rat trap you can find and use peanut butter as bait! Don't touch it with your hands btw, they sense humans that way, I put it on the trap with a piece of wood from the yard!