The first house I bought had roof rats the size of small dogs living in the crawl space above the master bedroom. Every night for weeks those suckers would tippy-toe out of the forest, climb the utility pole in the back yard, do a Carl Wallenda across the power lines and drop onto my roof like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Then they would begin an all night dance fest in my ceiling. I remember lying in bed at night with my feline companions listening to them run around on the ceiling, the cat's ears swiveling as their heads tracked the sound while they waited to see if the rats would finally chew a hole in the ceiling and fall down like candy from a pinata. It never happened. I would have had a blue kitten if it had.
One evening we were in the back yard and I looked up from the book I was reading to notice my cat was staring up at the power lines. The evening procession had begun. When I looked up into multiple sets of beady eyes my blood froze and it was game on!
The next day I purchased a box of the biggest rat traps I could find, a block of cheese, and got out my ladder. I set up the traps just below where Bruce and Arnold made their landing and waited. Every day I would climb the ladder to check the traps, nothing. Every night, rat party in my bedroom ceiling. Finally, I stumbled upon bacon as my bait, everyone likes bacon, right? I found out rats like it especially after it has been out in the hot sun for a few days and gotten nice and smelly. The afternoon I came home from work and climbed the ladder to check the traps and there was a not quite dead (did I say they were huge) roof rat in my trap I almost fell off the ladder backwards into the fence. Even the neighbors heard my shreiks of terror as I came down head over teakettle.
But I got the stinkin' little sleep-depriving sucker! And his buddy Arnold too... or was it Angelina?
I was finally able to sit back and enjoy a glass of wine on the patio as I read my book in the evening and not worry about the nightly rat invasion. It went really well with all that left over cheese.

You can catch them yourself using a live trap: Hava-Heart 1040. For more info go to the unexco squirrel board on the internet. It has a lot of info.