possible wild mice/rats in house- should I wait?

Hi

I've wanted to get some rats for a few years now after I met the rats
my brothers had. I've decided I'd like to buy them now but there may
be a problem...

I live in a shared house & before I lived there they had some
visitors, not sure if they were mice/rats but they were evicted by a
man with a trap. But now my housemate thinks they may have returned.

If I buy them they will be spending most of the time in my room on the
3rd floor and my housemate says she thinks she heard/saw something
downstairs.

I'm not sure if I believe her as I've not seen/heard anything myself
but I wouldn't want to have them risk catching a disease. Is the
presence of wild mice/rats in the house a problem for pet rats?
Should I make sure that there are no visitors before I think about
moving my guys in?

I'm not sure what to do? Any thoughts/suggestions would be gratefully
received,


cheers,

Si

We had mice in our house. Would run across the living room floor every
night at about 2am (we're students). Trapped it in the room once and spent
three hours chasing the little bugger until I caught it (shoe box with small
hole cut in one end and placed along skirting board where the mouse ran
straight into it - thought it was a good place to hide I guess). Didn't
want to kill it and didn't want to chuck it out as thought it would come
straight back in so kept it a prisoner Camp X-ray style, until the little
scrote escaped. Was hoping it would teach other mice a lesson. Got council
in with poison after that but the mice weren't touching it. THEN I bought a
rat, which had free reign of th living room and guess what? Mice
disappeared! I like to think the rat scared 'em off, although they probably
found some poison in the end :-(

But anyway, don't let their wild cousins put you off - you may even get rid
of them!

Mark.