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Hold it upside down and lead with it.
When I was a kid we owned, and lived in, an old two family home with a dirt cellar and attic space.
In the cellar was the coal furnace, and the fuse box. I loved going down there. Mainly because of the smell of the dirt.
OTOH, in the winter my mom would hang laundry in the attic. I would often go up there with her, but found it really creepy. Mostly because there was a small poster type picture of a snarling grizzly bear with its mouth open and fangs bared. I swear its eyes used to follow me around. Sometimes I would lie awake at night waiting to hear footsteps from the attic above...
I wouldn't be surprised if one of those was down there. 
I wish I could bring the puppy dog to protect me but the stairs are a deterrent. My last dog Maxie would always stand guard at the door and whine until I came back up. 
It's funny because when the occasional one makes its way upstairs in the house I am not afraid of them. When they are down there though in the dark, cramped space, hanging out on the low ceiling, I want to scream and run.
They've been hanging out on our deck the last couple of weeks. He's about the size of a quarter.
Do NOT want him in my hair!
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5/6 dirt crawl bend-forward-and-try-to-walk space, 1/6 concrete SRO cellar. With cobwebs galore.
The already dessicated rat in the far reaches I saw last year is no longer there. I guess Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, knew how to take care of it; it turned back to dust. (My back was achy after bending over and "walking" when I first saw it, so I put off going back with dog-doo tongs and a bag to collect it. 
)
Our neighbor has a friendly little tabby cat who likes to slip down our cellar stairs near the back door when the dog isn't watching, then jumps up on to the water heater and climbs on up into the wall space where she found a napping spot in the recess of the walls above built-in cabinets. Sometimes she comes up the cellar stairs festooned with cobwebs dangling from her whiskers.
I never minded the daddy long-legs spiders, but then one time I saw a black widow hanging from a joist.
The kitty would be a comfort though. She could protect against any lurking mice.Every fall when it started to get cold, a mouse or roof (small) rat or two seemed to find their way into the attic or cellar and I'd set a Havahart trap. Since the kitty started spending some time hanging out two years ago, 
,no more rodents!
it will be your demise!
when I was a kid, I used to worry about encountering vampires in the basement at night. 
It could have been a Vampire Bat!
I left all the lights on down there last night as suggested and thankfully didn't encounter any spiders. I just knocked down the webs as quickly as possible and ran back up the stairs. The rest is up to the furnace dude or dudette.
