When I built a house for a guy in Hawaii I lived in a old barn in a orchid farm. Talk about rats. They got into everything. When we left we put a bunch of poison out. When back a year later to finish the place. The rats tunnels into the center of our sleeping bags and died.
Things over there don't dry up very good.
They imported mongoose to get rid of the rats. The only problem is the rats come out at night and the mongooses sleep at night, so they ate all the bird eggs instead.