Much ado about nothing, apparently

I spent today doing some much needed housecleaning.  During the course of cleaning my kitchen, I opened up the pantry with the intention of cleaning up the floor.  I took out the trash can and other misc. things that sit on the floor in there out and gasped in horror when I saw little brown pellets along the back wall of the pantry.

After screaming "Oh HELL NO!" and doing a wierd little "ew, ew, EW!" dance around the kitchen, I got myself together and swept up what I was certain were rat droppings from the bottom of my FOOD pantry.  I then Skyped John with the news that OH MY GOD WE HAVE RATS! RATS!  John, calm as ever was disbelieving.  I assured him that I grew up on horse property. We had a barn for goodness sake, I KNOW WHAT RAT POOP LOOKS LIKE! WE HAVE RATS OH MY GOD WE HAVE RATS!!!!!  He told me to call our pest control service.

I called and made an appointment for someone to come fumigate the hell out of our house as soon as possible.  The woman on the phone told me that if I saw any more I should save them in a baggie to show the technician so he knew what he was dealing with and he'd be here Tuesday morning.

I decided that I still had to clean the rest of the pantry, so I calmed myself down and reinspected the floor.  I noticed three more little pellets.  I carefully swept them up and put them on a paper towel.  And I looked at them.  And then I REALLY looked at them.

 

Then Alex stated the obvious "That not rat poop Mommy.  That chockit!"

You should have heard the pest control lady laugh when I called to tell her that no, we did not need them to make a special trip out to rid our house of miniature chocolate chips, I could do that myself.