Bad Stuff

So, I feel bad.
Last year, we got some really heavy rains over a period of time that caused our local river to rise, which flooded the banks and drove all the critters to higher ground. My entire neighborhood became infested with rats. A few months back we finally got rid of the last one in the house, after using traps.
So, a couple of weeks ago, when I realized we had a rodent in the kitchen, I started putting down poison. An anticoagulant that I bought near the end of our infestation that didn't seem to do much as a deterrant to our then infestation.
The new rat was eating the poison. I'd put a block down between the fridge and the kitchen counter and it would vanish in a day or so. So I'd put down another and expect to find, or at least smell, the corpse after it died.
I sort of had this idea that the rat would eat the poison, experience some mild discomfort, and die in its sleep.
Well, I suppose I sort of hoped that that would be how it happened.
That wasn't how it died.
Tonight, while I was downstairs listening to a podcast with my headphones, my roommate, Jorg, discovered the rat. It was trying to get back to its hole, but it was too bloated to fit. It got stuck. Jorg tried to tug it out of the space by its tail.
The rat's tail disconnected from its body. Apparently, it started screaming.
Eventually, Jorg managed to get the rat and put it outside the house, where it has probably died from internal bleeding and shock.
And I feel really bad about how the rat died. I wanted it dead, or gone, but I didn't want it to suffer. I genuinely thought that the anticoagulant would be a quick, relatively painless death.
Apparently not.
I don't think we have any other rodents in the house right now, but if we do, I know I won't put down that poison again. What that poor animal went through was just too horrible for me to keep thinking about.
It'll just be traps from now on. No more poison. Just traps.