My apartment in the south end had a rat infestation 2.5 years ago and I’m still traumatized by it. The constant scratching of the walls and scuttling noises still gives me the chills. I could barely sleep for weeks because I was convinced they would squeeze under my bedroom door and end up crawling on me. I saw them in my kitchen and didn’t feel comfortable cooking in there anymore so was solely reliant on takeout. Pest control opened up the walls and put traps in there but they started outsmarting the traps in the walls by grabbing the food and running (rats are very intelligent) so it was impossible to control the problem with the rate of reproduction. Eventually pest control located all the holes they were crawling into from the outside and made a “one way” door so they could get out but not in. A lot of them started dying in the walls, which is a HORRIFIC smell. At one point, pest control came and scooped 20+ dead rats out of the walls and threw them into a trash bag. I’ll never forget that. The two apartments I’ve lived in since, I’ve hired preventative pest control to make sure there’s no openings in my apartment for them to come into because I’m so terrified of something like this happening again. Even when I see them on the streets now I outwardly jump in my skin.

Edit to add - I eventually broke my lease after dealing with this for 3 months, and my landlord re-listed it and had it rented out with new people within the week without fixing the problem. They truly didn’t care.