Gardener found a dead rat outside.

[MumTeapot5]

Hi everyone.
I need someone to calm me down or something 🤷🏼‍♀️
As the title says my gardener has been around for my monthly maintenance visit and while deweeding my raised flower bed and pulling off the ivory on the garden wall growing over from next doors garden he has found a dead rat in there. Looks like it may have been poisoned as it was intact 🤢 I’ve spoken to both my neighbours who we are friendly with to ask if they know of any issues on the street and both have said none that they are aware of, I guess I’m just freaked out where it’s came from and now I’m walking around my house checking for any entry points and hoping if they are about that they can’t actually get into my house!
Rats are my biggest fear and the thought of them has me freaking out.
Please help and put my mind at ease!

There are lots of rats on my street, they only come out at night so you rarely see them but they are always there. In over 10 years here I've yet to see one inside the house. Just because they are around doesn't mean they want to come in.

Our neighbours have chickens and I saw a rat a couple of times last year. One of my dogs chased it away and I guess it didn’t much fancy taking on a whippet so I haven’t seen it again. I did stop feeding the birds for a bit but it hasn’t turned into a big problem. Next door did tell me next time they saw me that they had put poison down so to be careful with the dogs but all sorted I wouldn’t worry about it.