Professional Rodent Control
Effective Rodent Removal
When it comes to the worst nuisance animal to get into your home, rats and mice are generally considered the worst. Rodents are capable of causing serious damage and destruction to homes and properties. In addition, rats and mice carry many very serious diseases that can put people in the hospital, or possibly even cause death. Continue reading to learn more about rodents and how you can get rid of them as soon as possible.
What attracts rodents to a property?
Rats and mice pick out where they want to live based on two main factors. Probably the most important is whether or not they can find a good, warm shelter. This often leads to rodents trying to make their way into the protective warmth of a home or garage. In addition to looking for shelter, rodents require easy sources of food, and many times a yard will appear enticing to rodents if they can find pet food, different flowers and plants, trash, and other easy pickings.
What problems do rodents cause?
When it comes to the problems rodents cause, there are two major categories: property damage and the potential for dangerous illness. The most important of these is definitely the risk for disease. Rats and mice commonly carry many terrible bacterial and viral infections that can potentially cause you, your family or your pets to have serious medical problems. Among the worst of these illnesses are rat-bite fever, hantavirus, and salmonella, each of which can potentially cause death to humans and pets. Rodents are able to spread their illnesses in three distinct ways, making them even more threatening. Being bitten or clawed by a rodent can spread disease, as can coming into contact with their urine or feces. Finally, rodents can contaminate any food or food preparation areas you have. Since the potential for exposure gets greater the longer rodents are around, it is very important to remove them as soon as possible.
The property damage that rodents cause is a very big concern, as they are capable of gnawing through almost any material. This often leads to rodents creating new entry holes into your home, possibly allowing more nuisance wildlife in. Rats and mice tear up insulation, cutting your home’s energy efficiency down. These critters will also gnaw on electrical wiring, creating the potential for fires in your attic and walls. Since they can chew through building materials, they are capable of gaining access to any part of your home. Getting rid of rodents as quickly as possible can save you serious money in the long run.
How can rodents be prevented?
Due to their small body size, rats and mice can get into virtually any hole or gap they can find, and if they cannot find a hole, they may just chew their own! One of the best ways to keep mice and rats out of your home is to be sure that there are no easy entrance points. To begin with, examine your home’s interior and exterior, focusing on looking for any hole, gap, crack, or another suspicious area that may allow rodent access. If you find any potential problem areas, these are often easy to fix with all-weather sealant, aluminum sheeting, or steel wool in some cases. Performing these steps will make it much harder for rodents to gain entry to your home.
How should rodents be removed?
Removing rodents is a very tricky proposition, as there are many factors that can affect the success of someone performing DIY rodent removal. If you know for sure that only one or two mice or rats are in your home, you should be able to attempt to remove them on your own. This can involve using a snap trap, repeater-style trap, glue trap, or any other rodent trap on the market. It is important to note that you must remove every mouse or rat from your home quickly, or they will begin to repopulate at an incredible rate. If this occurs, hiring a professional wildlife removal company will have to be the next step. This is why many people just opt for professional help in the beginning, as it will cost much less if the problem is less severe.
One of the best reasons to hire a professional wildlife removal company if you have rodents in our home is that they will be able to remove these animals very quickly, keeping the problem from getting out of hand. In addition, this quick removal will remove all threats of human and rodent interaction, slashing the risk of picking up an illness from the rodents. On a related note, many wildlife removal companies offer sanitation and cleanup services, so all of the viral and bacterial infections rodents carry will be killed.
Why hire Woodlands Wildlife Elimination?
Here at Woodlands Wildlife Elimination, our experts have been removing rodents from our client’s homes for years, building up a wealth of knowledge and experience. We focus on listening to our client’s needs, providing them with options, and then performing the service as quickly and affordably as possible. We are proud to provide not only rodent removal services, but also animal exclusions, animal damage repair, attic restoration, sanitation, and odor removal services as well. If you are dealing with a rodent problem and live in Houston or the surrounding areas, give us a call here at Woodlands Wildlife Elimination, as we would love to help you out today!
How to Remove Rats From The Wall
Most homeowners are used to the idea that at some point, they might encounter wild animals somewhere around their property. It doesn’t seem unusual that they might run into them in the yard, munching in their garden, or sometimes even in their attic. But one thing homeowners are generally less comfortable with is finding wild animals trapped in the walls. Visit pestcontrolrat.com to learn more about rat removal methods.
Now, of course, the presence of wild animals inside your walls isn’t just unpleasant, but can also pose quite a few risks to your home. For instance, if that animal dies inside your wall, the removal process will be destructive, difficult, and most of all, costly.
But first of all, how do you know if there are rats in the wall?
One of the most apparent signs of an animal inside the wall will be the noise coming from inside that wall. The type of sound may help you tell which animal is stuck inside, but scampering noises generally mean rats.
Other notable signs of a rat infestation are large holes in the walls, often leading to areas where they might access food or water, like the kitchen or pantry. Usually, the larger the hole, the more rats there are in the wall.
Lastly, the presence of rat droppings and urine stains near your walls, or inside your home, will tell you what you need to know.
So how can you remove rats from the wall?
First, figure out how they got into the house.
Obviously, if rats can’t get into your house, they can’t get into your walls, either. So a good first step is to check for holes and cracks in your external walls, roofing, and so on, and to seal them with caulk, wire mesh, or expanse foam to prevent future entries.
Now to the rats in the walls themselves.
Remove attractions.
A good idea might be to remove whatever attracted the rats to your home in the first place (e.g. open sources of food and water). The removal of these things may deter the rats from returning, and encourage them to take up residence elsewhere.
You can try poisons and traps…
There are various commercial solutions for getting rid of wild animals in your home, including traps, and poisons. Traps can be used by identifying the rat’s natural path outside of the wall. Remember that the wall is just a nesting area, but they regularly need to come out to procure food and water. You can generally figure out what areas a rat frequents because their fur tends to leave oily stains on furniture. So place a trap or even poison along that path, and check on it regularly, to remove the rat as soon as possible. You may use live traps or traditional snap traps, as per your wishes.
You may also use poisons or rat dehydrating products that would also kill the rat.
… But the best thing you can do is call a professional.
The trouble with using poisons is that the rat will not die instantly, but rather will take hours, during which it will most likely seek shelter, to protect itself from predators. And what better shelter than inside your walls?
If a rat dies inside your wall, this will lead to an unpleasant stench, and may even attract other wild animals. This is why, if you’re dealing with rats inside the walls, the best thing you can do is to call a wildlife removal professional, as they will know how to inspect, identify and remove the problem. Not only that, but they’ll also help you prevent rat invasions in the future.
How to Get Rats and Mice Out of the Attic?
One of the most common pests you’ll find within your attic, rats and mice can prove really annoying and quite difficult to take care of without the right precautions. These little creatures are, well, little, and will oftentimes crawl their way into a covered space through incredibly small openings. Additionally, mice and rats can give birth to large litters every month, meaning numbers can quickly grow.
It’s important to remove rats and mice from an attic to prevent an exponentially growing population atop everything else that comes with the rodents. Rats and mice carry diseases, can scratch or bite at you, mess up the insulation within your attic, and more. On top of that, they can bring in snakes and other rodent-eating animals, leading to an even greater problem.
So, while it might be hard to stop rats and mice from entering your attic, there are a few things you can do to make it a lot harder for them to come back. As such, here’s how to get rats and mice out of your attic.
Finding the Problem
Before you do anything, it’s necessary to check out the source of your problem and verify that it’s rodents causing whatever you hear, smell, or see. Rats and mice leave behind scratches, droppings, and noises that might be confused with other creatures like raccoons, opossums, or squirrels, so it’s important to make sure that you’re dealing with rats and mice rather than those animals.
Fortunately, mice and rats are pretty easy to discover – they’re both very active animals so you’ll likely get visual confirmation before anything else, but you might also come across urine, droppings, nests, burrows, or chewed items, which are all indicative of one of these rodents having been in your attic.
Once you’ve determined that you’re dealing with rats or mice, visually or otherwise, look for (and find) any entrances they might have come through. Although it might be safest to look for entrances and exits from the outside, it might be easy if you have protection, to view spots of sunlight from within a dark attic.
After you’ve found any spots that rats and mice might come and go through, then you’ll need to seal all but one of them. These rodents are a little harder to contain than some other attic-dwelling creatures, so you might need to resort to more than netting or spacing; something like caulk or fitted wood might be a good solution for all but one entrance.
Getting Rats and Mice Out of the Attic
Following the sealing of all but one entrance or exit to an attic, then you’ll need to place a cage trap or a snap trap at the open space. We recommend to go with a cage trap when possible, although snap traps are a quick and painless way to get rid of a rodent problem permanently. Cage traps make it possible to relocate the families, which is especially important if there are any children, although you might not be able to release rodents in your area.
For any situation involving removing a rat or mice, we recommend you ask a local professional or animal control for information regarding where and when you’re allowed to remove rodents. Some places won’t allow you to kill them as soon as you’re ready, while other encourage that to prevent damage to the environment. Either way, make sure to verify beforehand.
Once you’ve trapped the rodents, however, then the next move is to seal the remaining space and clean up the entire area. Remember, these animals can leave behind corrosive droppings and diseases, so it’s essential that you make sure to clean and disinfect everything. This is an incredibly important step that too many people forget about after getting rid of rats and mice in their attic.