Do you have some little mischiefs you didn’t invite to your home? They might seem and smell unpleasant. Yes, you got it right. I am talking about the little rodents called rats. Rats are carriers of many dangerous diseases that can be risky to human life. Let’s do a thorough analysis of rats.
What do rats survive upon?
Rats can live in rat colonies as well as human settlements. They benefit from several things from humans, which makes it convenient for them to live around them:
Food
Rats are omnivorous animals. They are expert scavengers which scavenge through garbage and devour food that has been left out. Rats can eat small birds and mammals.
Water
Rats do not need to drink water directly. This is because they get adequate water through the food. They drink water through sewer pipes or dripping walls.
Shelter
In the wild, rats rely on grasses, bushes and other plants for protection. A rat will seek sanctuary in homes, beneath wooden furniture, behind walls, or in dark, seldom-used areas.
Reproduction
Brown rats may give birth to up to 2,000 pups in a single year. With a less than a month gestation period, it’s simple to understand how populations may swiftly outgrow control.
You’ll notice an increase in droppings and damage as rat populations develop in or around your home.
Rats are harmful to humans’ ease
Increasing rat populations put you in danger of contracting diseases spread by rodents. Rats are notorious for distributing a wide range of illnesses. They’ve recently been discovered to be Hepatitis E carriers, infecting others with the virus. Many of them are infected with typhus.
Procedure to Get Rid of Rats
Go step by step through these points to get rats out of your house:
- Full Inspection
You must first do a thorough home examination to determine where they are coming from. Inspect the outside of the house for apparent entry points, paying specific attention to broken drains, garage door breaches, holes, etc. You may plug the entry sites and place traps once you know where the rats are getting into the residence.
- Fill The Gap
Rats do not require a human door to enter your house. They fit through the crevices of walls or the hinges of doors. Care should be taken to ensure that sizable holes in walls are mended properly. Make sure to consult a professional not to trap necessary airflow into your walls.
Without this step you run into the risk of having rats enter your house.
You can fill holes which are not weeping holes, with cement or steel wool and caulk for long-lasting effects. Keep a check on them to ensure they’re in good working order.
You can look out for pest control experts like SIA Wildlife Control to get rid of rats and mend the entry and exit points when practical.
- Level up house’s cleanliness
Rats live in dirty places. A place that’s seldom or never cleaned, provides shelter and safety. Stacked up clothing over clothing, unorganized books on the floor and food wraps all over the basement is an invitation to rats.
Rats require their hideouts to be dirty because it implies humans or predators aren’t around. Try to get rid of these hiding places which would automatically take the rat’s refuge away and reduce sightings. It would be a really great method to remove the rat without killing them. You should remove items off the walls and clean up the clutter in and around your home.
Keep the garbage and food in sealed containers, wipe up spills quickly, and keep your pipes and drains dry and clean.
- Trap Them
Trapping has been the most efficient technique to eradicate rats as rodenticides and severe poisons have gone out of favor or been prohibited. Traps are what kills rats quickly and effectively. Trapping is a non-poisonous way to control a rat infestation.
Although you should leave the hassle of trapping to experts like us. Even then, if you want to do it yourself, set the traps in the places where you have spotted the rat. Bait can include peanut butter, unsalted seeds, bananas, or apples.
- Things to keep the rat away
- Peppermint oil is not much preferred by rats. You should soak cotton balls in peppermint oil and throw them around the places you found the rats. For maximum effects, keep repeating the activity. This will also keep your house fresh and less attractive to other pests
- Pour the instant potato powder anywhere you suspect the rats will congregate. The rats will consume the powder, but the potato flakes will expand in the rodents’ intestines, eventually killing them.
- Onions are not only repulsive to you, but they are also repulsive to rats. However, because onions decay rapidly and might be harmful to dogs at home, this hack is a bit hard. Every other day, you’d need to replace the onion with a fresh one.
- Combine dry POP with cocoa or chocolate powder and sprinkle it in areas where rats congregate. They will hurriedly race out of your home to drink water and perish once they have consumed the combination.
- This is the most cost-effective method of preventing pests from entering your house. Pepper is a time-honored method of keeping animals away from plants.
- Sprinkle pepper about the entryway and adjacent places to keep rats away. You’re probably aware that mice hate strong odors. Fill small dishes with ammonia and place them near their favorite locations.
This concludes the complete guide to keeping rats away. For complete rat extermination without trial and error, call the rat removal experts at SIA Wildlife Control to have a safe and efficient pest removal.