The Most Despised of Mammals

Because rodents are mammals, it makes sense why they take shelter in Southern California homes. They do it for the same reason we do: to find a comfortable spot to eat, sleep, and raise their young away from outdoor weather hazards. Not surprisingly, the types we typically encounter are the most agile and determined rodent species: roof rats, Norway rats, and house mice.

Good at Getting In

Rats and mice may be small, but they sure are skilled. Even with a weak sense of sight, their strong sense of touch and taste are enough to guide them to a more comfortable environment. Once there, they get inside by putting their impressive climbing, jumping, and chewing abilities to use. They enter the following ways:

• Slipping through cracks and holes in walls (house mice can fit through a hole 1/4 of an inch wide)
• Crawling under doors (or simply sneaking in through open doors)
• Climbing onto roofs and slipping through openings (how do you think “roof rats” got their name?)
• Chewing into building material to create entrances of their own
• Tunneling through air vents and drain pipes

Sealing entry points is a good way to keep rats and mice out, but it’s not a perfect solution. That’s because, with incredibly hard teeth, rats are capable of chewing through brick, aluminum, and even cement. The most effective way of rodent prevention, then, is to not only seal cracks and holes, but to also make your home seem less appealing to rats and mice.

How Your Home Becomes a Haven

The major appeal your home has to rodents is the shelter and resources (think food and water). They know that to sustain populations, they need to protect themselves from outdoor predators. And who doesn’t like free-reign in an open pantry? Food and nesting spots are the prime reasons rodents will call your home their own – and the more available these are, the longer they’re likely to stay.

Nesting and Pestering

Like many other pests, rats and mice build makeshift nests to support colonies. In addition to gnawing an opening into homes, they’re also known to gnaw common household items like cardboard boxes, newspapers, and clothing into comfortable nests. While often difficult to spot, droppings and footprints are signs a nest is around.

Preventing the buildup of clutter is a surefire way to keep rats and mice from settling down – it eliminates the prevalence of hiding places and nesting materials. Your basement is likely a target (specifically, by Norway rats), meaning that deep cleaning you keep putting off may bring more benefits than you think. They look for warm spaces as well, so make sure to keep your attic (a prime spot for roof rats) clean and organized.

Scavenging and Ravaging

Rats and mice are scavengers: They seek food from the scraps we leave behind. In the wild, they usually feed on grains, berries, and nuts, but after coming indoors, they look for everything from crumbs to spills. As omnivores, they’ll go for just about anything, but they prefer:

• Cereal
• Seeds
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Oils and fats

Rodents, like us, need water in order to survive. While mice are often able to live on the water in food alone, rats typically need a consistent source of standing water. This is where rats get creative, drinking out of pet water bowls, recently watered plants, leaky pipes, and kitchen or bathroom faucets.

For the most part, all it takes to prevent rodents is good hygiene and cleanliness. Seal all containers, keep food in the refrigerator, clean eating areas daily, and wipe up spills. The less potential contact rats and mice have with your food, the better. That’s because they spread salmonella, the infamous foodborne illness you usually get by eating uncooked meat.

The Issue That Gets Worse with Time

Salmonella isn’t the only concern regarding rats and mice. They carry dozens of diseases, spreading them via saliva, droppings, and urine (of which is nearly constantly trickling out as they run around, depositing several hundred droplets all across your home within a single day). So, you could say they’re a pretty big health hazard. In addition, because they often nest in walls, their chewing habits can lead to destruction of wiring and drywall as they infest. Altogether, rodents’ health and structural threats are a dangerous combination.

If that isn’t bad enough, they’re incredibly fast to reproduce; meaning their population and associated risks grow at an exponential rate. In fact, it was recently found that a pair of rats is capable of producing half a billion descendants in three years. It’s no surprise, then, that with so many homes in our region, they’ve become an epidemic. Don’t make it easy for them to take over your home – take action before it’s too late.

From Prevention to Treatment

As we’ve mentioned, prevention is a great first step in combatting the presence of rodents in your home. But they’re like a disease, capable of spreading despite our best efforts. When that happens, treatments like baits and traps are a good route to go. Remember, though, that although you may catch one rat, there may be others lingering elsewhere in your home. If your problem doesn’t seem to go away, it’s time you call in the professionals.

Pest Control as a Dependable Rodent Solution

At Lloyd Pest Control, we’re the rodent experts you need to eliminate rats or mice – no matter the extent of their infestation. We approach rodent problems with strategic, state-of-the-art extermination techniques to stop this pest at the source. We’ll inspect your home to determine which treatment is right for your home, then place traps, glue boards, and bait stations accordingly.

Contact Lloyd Pest Control to get the best solution for your Southern California home’s rodent epidemic.

The post Your Home, Their Haven: All About Rodents’ Love of the Indoors first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.

Get your questions answered about rats’ health concerns, as well as how action can prevent you, your family, or a customer from getting sick.

Are Rats as Filthy as People Say?

It’s obvious why rats are thought to be unsanitary. One look at their furry bodies and fleshy tails, and words like “dirty” and “filthy” come to mind. They don’t often come out into the open, but if you’ve seen a rat scurry across your floor in the past, you probably remember how much it freaked you out. Still, are they as much of a sanitation risk as we might think?

The answer is a resounding “yes!” Rats’ icky appearance mirrors what they carry on the inside: diseases upon diseases. Among pests, only the Zika-carrying mosquito contains more. As rats munch on our food and water and leave droppings and urine behind, they spread illness, calling your property’s sanitation into question.

What Diseases Do Rodents Spread?

The presence of rats in your home or business should be of high concern, as the larger your infestation grows, the more pathogens there are to go around. The last thing you want, anyway, is a whole herd of rodents nesting in your walls. They spread several types of diseases, including:

• Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome: Symptoms include fatigue, fever, and/or shortness of breath. Initially, you may think you think you have the flu, but once diagnosed, you’ll realize you have a rat infestation. This illness is transmitted by direct contact with rat urine or feces, or a rat bite.
• Salmonellosis: Symptoms include diarrhea, fever, and/or nausea. You probably know it better as a foodborne illness, but in addition to uncooked meat, it’s also caused by infected rats. Salmonellosis is transmitted by consuming food or water contaminated by rat feces.
• Rat-bite fever: Symptoms include rash, fever, nausea, and/or headaches. Like its name states, this illness is transmitted from rat bites or scratches. Rat-bite fever only pops up when in direct contact with a rat, and you may notice a rash where there’s broken skin.
• Lymphocytic choriomeningitis. Symptoms include fever, aches, nausea, meningitis, and/or encephalitis. This illness is transmitted through contact with rat saliva or urine. Often, symptoms go on long-term, and you could end up with neurological damage without treatment.
  

  

Why Else Are They a Danger to Our Health?

Rats carry disease in another way too: by hosting parasites. This pest is a popular host for fleas and ticks, who spread diseases of their own. Not only are rats affected, but as the parasites are carried indoors on their fur, they also have the ability to hop onto pets and people. A lot of what we think to be sickness spread by rats have actually been caused by parasites. The Black Plague that ravaged Europe in the 1300s, for example, was actually spread by fleas hosted by rats.

We know that rats bring in unsanitary conditions, but the opposite is true as well. This crawling pest is attracted to areas with poor sanitation already, scavenging for food in open containers, trash that’s been sitting around, and spills that weren’t cleaned up. If you run a restaurant, good sanitation is the best way to prevent a rat invasion – and a visit from the health inspector.

How Do I Keep Rats Away?

The best way to prevent rats is by sanitizing your home or business; be wary of anything that might attract them. Cut off available food and water sources, and they won’t have what they need to survive indoors in the first place. Covering up cracks, holes, and other entry points is effective, but it’s not an end-all solution; remember, rats have the teeth to gnaw through wood and siding.

If they do end up inside, you want to go with a bait or trap to eradicate them. The hope is to get rid of rats before an infestation grows, because – with their fast reproduction rates – they become incredibly hard to get rid of once inside. Place baits or traps anywhere you have noticed them. With a bait, you place poisoned pellets in tamper-resistant bait stations (safe against pets and children). For traps, you have multiple choices.

• Snap traps: This trap features a hinge that snaps shut once the rat grabs the bait. Rat traps are stronger than mice traps.
• Live traps: As implied, the rat goes through a hole in the trap to get the bait, and a door closes once it gets inside to trap it alive.
• Glue traps: Bait is placed on top of the glue in this trap. When the rat tries to grab the bait, it becomes stuck.

We also associate cats with rat control, and that brings up the question of how effective they truly are. It’s in a cat’s nature to prey on small creatures like rats, but their instincts only go so far as a solution. That’s because the fast breeding of rats prevents household felines from keeping populations under control.

Lloyd Pest Control: Rat Repellers

If you have a rat infestation that has become hard to stop, professional pest control is your best bet. Lloyd Pest Control provides rodent services to Southern California, with strategic bait and trap treatments that conquer even large populations of rats. We have the expert tools to keep your home or business free of this disease-ridden rodent.

Contact Lloyd Pest Control today to get your rat infestation under control – and keep your health in check.

The post Contaminating Crawlers: Why Rats Are a Health Hazard first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.