Rat!

Now I’ll preface this by saying I’m posting for my lovely mum, who is deathly afraid of anything rodent-y, and I’m a vet student who’s very partial to a rodent, so this might sound a little biased! Recently, my parents went on holiday for a week and when they came back, the garden wall had been dug out (we had a family of field mice living there, so it was brushed off as being them). Yesterday, my mum spotted this little rat emerging from the wall and hoovering up the bird seed (much to her dismay!), and she came back at the same time again today (certainly the same rat as she’s got a little bit of white paint on her tail). Now for my question – how bad would it be to leave this little rat be? She’s obviously made a home in our wall (dread to think what’s happened to our field mice unfortunately). My mum’s stopped feeding the birds to try and discourage it, but realistically will it want to move on if it’s got a little home already? And my most important question haha, what are the chances of this being someone’s pet ratty who’s gotten lost? It looks and acts an awful lot like a pet rat, it’s so tidy and clean looking – but I would hate to box up a poor wild rat and bring it to work to try and reunite it with its nonexistent owners 😅 Hopefully anyone who’s dealt with rats in the garden before can leave some tips for helping them move on!