Tag Archives: rats

Rat, Rats

Rats!!

Leave a comment

rats1We get a lot of questions about rats.  What do rats like to eat?  Why are rats in my home?  What do rat droppings look like?  How do I get rid of rats?

 

Roof rats, Norway rats, black rats, pack rats, kangaroo rats, naked mole rats, cotton rats.  Not all creatures called “rats” are actually of the rat family, but when you’re dealing with a rat infestation, you probably don’t care what type of rat you have, you just want them gone.  Unfortunately, different types of rats behave differently, which means that you need to know what kind of rats are breeding around you so that you can most effectively get rid of them.  That’s one real advantage to having a rat catcher / wildlife removal expert.  With a little investigation, they can tell what kind of rats are infesting your house or building, and they have the expertise and tools to get rid of that particular type of rat.

 

Rat teeth are constantly growing, so a rat must continually gnaw on things to keep them a manageable size.  Combine that need with strong teeth and powerful jaw muscles, and rats can chew through pretty much anything, including concrete and lead pipes.  A rat can bite with the force of 12 tons per square inch (a great white shark bites with 20 tons per square inch.)  Ouch!!  So, once rats are in a building or a home, anything is fair game for gnawing.  Wood joists, wires, boxes, soffit, pretty much any building material and personal property.

 

Rats will eat pretty much anything and gnaw on everything. They are opportunistic feeders, which means if they can get at it, they’ll eat it.  Grains, meat, fish, seeds, fruit, snails, insects, pet food, leather, fur and other rodents.  Keeping lids tight on garbage cans, getting rid of bird feeders, and cutting off access to gardens and food storage will all help limit a rat’s access, but they’re quite capable of climbing, jumping and chewing their way in if they’re determined.  Allstate Animal Control has a slick rodent barrier that prevents rodents from digging under a fence and climbing up fences, trees or telephone posts to gain access to a food source.

 

Rat droppings are compact black pellets that look very much like a bean or raisin.  Their droppings usually measure about ¼ to ¾ of an inch long, and are usually found in their traffic areas, outside the structure, by window wells, window ledges, or access holes.

 

Rats can get into a home through a tiny opening.  Holes left by woodpeckers, openings around pipes, a weak soffit or other roofing material are excellent access points for rats, and you may notice the entryway is black and greasy from a rat’s body oils.  Finding and sealing one opening, though, may not be enough.  They will likely have more than one entrance point.  Again, a professional rat trapper can inspect your building or home, locate and seal up these little holes.

 

Picking up a few traps at a hardware store and setting them around heavily trafficked areas is definitely an option for homeowners, but since rats are such prolific breeders, it’s likely you have more rats in the walls or attic or under the floor than you can see or catch.  Rat poison is another option, but introduces possible harm or even death to children or animals who get overly curious. Also, rats are smart and learn to quickly avoid most poisons set out for them.  Keep in mind that rats pack a painful bite, carry diseases (sometimes fatal diseases), and get very feisty and ornery when cornered.  The absolute best way of getting rid of rats is to have a professional trapper come out to your building.  They have the expertise, the tools and the experience to find out which kind of rat you’re dealing with, use the most effective methods of exterminating rats or trapping rats or killing rats, and do what is needed to keep rats from coming back.

Rat, Rats

Rats, Disease, and Rat Mites

Leave a comment
Rat Mite, courtesy of Biodisc/Visuals Unlimited, Inc.

It’s well-known that rats are responsible for spreading lots of diseases, and recently researchers have discovered 18 more unknown viruses carried by New York City’s rats.  As if they weren’t already bad enough!  But, of course, we know that rats are found all over the United States, not just in the big cities, and we should all be aware that they present a very real and serious health risk.

According to the CDC, the diseases we know of that are transmitted from rodents to humans include: Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome, Lassa Fever, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic Chorio-meningitis (LCM), Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever, Plague, Rat-Bite Fever, Salmonellosis, South American Arenaviruses, and Tularemia.  Awful, right?

Now, let’s add to that the fact that rats have tiny parasites called rat mites that live on rats and inside their nests and feed off rat blood.  But, rat mites are capable of living without a rat host, and are perfectly happy to feed off human blood.  If you have rat mites, you have a rat problem, and it’s time to get rid of those rats.  The advantage to having Allstate Animal Control send someone out to take care of your rat problem is you get experts who are experienced at getting rid of the rats that are breeding in your structure, as well as sanitizing and repairing the area they infested so rat mites don’t seek out new hosts (aka you, your family or your pets).  They can also inspect your home or other building to seek out and seal up all entrance points to prevent the rats from returning and keep other wild animals out.

Rats

Dead Rat In Wall

Leave a comment

get rid of rats

 

My apartment smells like sewage, and the maintenance guys for the apartment complex told me it’s probably a dead rat in the wall.  We’ve been having a rat problem outside in our area, which is bad enough, but when the rats get inside the building and then die in the walls, it’s awful.

When I was in high school, a rat died in the wall of my Mom’s house.  It smelled like urine and decay and it was just awful.  It had died inside one of the walls of the downstairs bathroom, and we had to have someone come in and tear up the walls of the bathroom until they found the dead rat and removed it.  So, I know what you’re supposed to do if you have a dead rat inside the wall.

But, the maintenance guys for my apartment complex figured they’d just do something else, something simple.  They came in and re-caulked the top and bottom of the walls and then  left, saying I’d have to just deal with the smell until the rat had decayed enough that it stopped smelling.  Uh, yeah, great idea.  Or not.  Who wants to live with an apartment that smells like sewage and dead rat??  I would think they’d have to check the pipes to see if somehow rats have damaged them, and then go inside the wall to remove the dead rat.  Because, a decomposing rat means that, not only are there nasty smells, but probably lots and lots of bugs, too.

I had a party planned for this weekend, but I’m going to have to cancel it or maybe convince one of my friends to have it at their place.  I can’t even stand to hang out in my front room, which is where the smell is worst, so how can I expect my friends to come over and sit around in that room?

The smell is so bad in that front room that I don’t even relax in there anymore.  I walk inside, holding my breath, go straight to the kitchen to drop my stuff off and get dinner, and then go straight to my bedroom, where I work on the computer and watch TV until it’s time to sleep.  I’m furious the maintenance people won’t do anything about the dead rat in my wall, other than just add a little caulk to “seal out the smell.”  But, I called the property manager, and convinced him to reduce my rent for next month by what it would cost me to get the dead rat removed out of the wall.  That doesn’t help me if there’s a problem with the pipes, but at least it gets the dead rat out of the wall.  One step at a time, I guess.

Rats

Rat Droppings

Leave a comment

Rat droppings just do not belong in your office’s break room.  I work in a typical office, filled with cubicles littered with pictures that remind each employee why they’re working so hard to bring in a paycheck.  Some hours of the day are fairly quiet, the sound of keyboards clacking and phones ringing fill the air.  Some hours of the day are pretty noisy, as co-workers socialize briefly before passing files onto someone else and sit back down to a fresh stack of their own.  Occasionally, someone tells a pretty raucous joke, or a highly-entertaining story about the weekend, and laughter circulates.  Certain days of the month are more stressful, when business normally picks up and deadlines loom.  Those are the days when people are more likely to snap at each other or pick up an old bickering conversation.  But, most of the time, it’s not a bad way to spend the days, weeks and months in order to pay for homes, cars, groceries and occasional vacations.

Our office doesn’t have an office administrator or office manager.  We’re all expected to keep our workstations clean and pick up after ourselves.  But, when there’s something bigger that needs to be repaired or maintained, the unspoken rule of the office is:  The person who complains is the person who maintains.  So, everyone pretends they don’t notice the air conditioning is broken so they don’t have to be the one to contact the repairman, oversee the work, and submit the paperwork.  Eyes are averted when the office refrigerator is opened, because no one wants to be the one to admit it really needs to be cleaned out.

I just about gagged when I noticed rat droppings in the break room, though.  It was impossible that the three other people who previously occupied the room failed to notice the black, round pellets scattered across the floor and one of the countertops.  I faced a dilemma.  Do I turn a blind eye, and tell myself that someone must have spilled their raisins?  Do I break out the gloves and cleaner and pick up the mess, keeping silent about the problem?  Or, do I take the proverbial bull by the horns, and take on the responsibility for getting a rat exterminator out to the office, getting nothing but paperwork and hassle for my effort?  The boss would probably also make me send an email around to my co-workers letting them know we have now attracted rats to the building, and making them empty food out of their desk drawers.  Yeah, that’d make me real popular.

But, rat droppings!  You can’t just let that slide by and hope the problem goes away.  Rats could be scurrying all through the walls right now, waiting for us to turn off the light so they can scamper out and run all over our desks, spreading diseases and filth.

I sighed as I realized I couldn’t just leave rat droppings in the break room, nor could I ignore the rat problem.  I definitely needed a raise, though!

Rats

Dead Rat

Leave a comment

rat removal

A dead rat was certainly not something I expected early in the morning as I stumbled through the house as quietly as I could to get to the gym and back before the kids woke up.

I had started a new exercise regime, hitting the gym or running on the nearby park trails.  With small children, a regular exercise routine was challenging, to say the least.  I’d tried popping in an exercise DVD or two, but the little ones thought it was a game.  They’d sit on my stomach as I tried to do sit-ups, run between my legs when I tried yoga, and I won’t even go into the trauma of kick-boxing.

Rat grin
Rat staring at you.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

Desperate, I was determined to get back in shape, whatever it took.  So, I went to bed pretty early each night, much to my husband’s chagrin, and woke up in the wee hours of the morning.  I snuck around the house, getting running shoes on, locating my MP3 player and filling my water bottle before tiptoeing out the front door and down the driveway.  For over three weeks, my new routine was working.  My husband was home, asleep but home, in case the children woke up early, but usually I was back just as everyone was waking up.  I’d then make breakfast, shower, and be ready for the day.  I was overjoyed and starting to see some success on the scale.

And then, the day of the dead rat.  I kept the house dark as I got ready to go running, because I knew every inch, every step of my home.  I skillfully remembered where toys had been carelessly left the night before and kept myself from loudly kicking toy cars and trains across the floor.  I would usually remember the last place the children were playing with my MP3 player, and could find it even in the darkness.  But, when my shoe-clad foot stepped on something unusual in the kitchen, I couldn’t figure out what it was.  It had some give, but there was a soft crack as my full body weight bore down on it.  I took two steps to the pantry, figuring I’d turn the pantry light on and partially close the door so I could determine what I’d stepped on without waking anyone up.

I turned on the light, stepped out of the pantry and closed the door half-way.  I looked down at the floor, and my mind couldn’t process what I was seeing.  Was this a child’s doll?  Some leftover food that had fallen on the floor during one of my husband’s late-night fridge raid?  In the partial shadows, I could see something glistening around it, but just couldn’t quite figure out the mysterious shape and substance.

Stepping closer, I stooped down and got really close.  My hand automatically reached out to scoop it up, but luckily my brain stopped my hand before contact was made.  “Dead Rat!” my brain screamed, and I jerked back.  My daily efforts of maintaining complete silence in the early morning hours paid off, and I’m proud to say I didn’t even shout out.  Instead, I yanked off my shoes, scooted back across the floor and sat there until my hands stopped shaking.  My mind raced, and I decided I would take care of calling in a professional rat exterminator, because where there’s one rat, there’s probably more.  I also decided to let my husband sleep in a little before making him clean up the mess.