It can be difficult to feel at ease in your home when you know dangerous pests are roaming around in the spaces where you eat, sleep and bathe. While all rodents are quite troubling, rats provide more health risks and dangerous scenarios than mice. Long-tailed, dangerous critters could be feasting on your scraps and picking away at pieces of your property right now.
If you suspect your home is at risk, it's never too early to develop a strategy for removal. Here's a look at everything you need to know if you want to eliminate troubling visitors from your property.
What Rodents Need to Survive
You might be surprised to learn that the average home in Melbourne has everything rats and mice need to enjoy a comfortable existence. Here are the three main things rats need to thrive and survive:
There's a good chance your home provides more than enough of all three of these things to support a robust rat or mouse population. It is important to systematically address all three things to effectively get your infestation under control.
The Dangers of Rats
Aside from being unsightly, rodents are actually quite dangerous to humans. They can easily tear away at pieces of furniture, siding and walls.
The damage done by rats can get out of control before you even know they've entered your home. Rats are also notorious for chewing wires. Torn and exposed wires put your home at risk for a fire.
What's even scarier is that rats will go after food sources in your home. The food you and your family are eating may become contaminated from rat feces and saliva.
You could also be exposed to the pests and insects that travel via rat fur. It is important to remember that you can become sick from rats without ever even seeing or touching one. Dust contaminated with the urine and feces of rats can actually make you sick.
The Worldwide Implications of Rats
Rat infestations are far more than just nuisances for homes. Getting a population of unwanted intruders under control is in the best interest of every member of a community.
Rats have played a role in spreading many major diseases throughout history.
In fact, they are known to spread at least three dozen diseases that are dangerous or fatal for humans and pets. Some of the most well-known diseases spread via rats include plague, salmonellosis, leptospirosis and tularemia.
Humans are at risk any time rats are present in their living spaces. Infection can occur as a result of direct bodily contact, bites, unsafe handling of deceased rats and consuming food or beverages contaminated by rats.
How to Keep Rats Away
There are some steps you can take to take control of the situation and deter rats from making a permanent home on your property. These easy, cheap steps to rat detection and removal could save you from a headache in the long run.
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Cover Holes
The first step is to take a thorough look at your property. It is essential to fill in any holes, cracks or gaps you spot. A rat can actually squeeze its body into a hole that equals the size of a quarter. Some materials you can use to seal up holes include:
- Steel wool
- Hardware cloth
- Caulk
- Cement
- Plaster
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Put Food Away
One sure way to make rats steer clear of your home is to let them know that the kitchen is closed! If you have a garden, be diligent about picking fruits and vegetables as soon as they ripen.
Keeping food containers sealed is one of the biggest aspects of rodent control and removal. Your garbage bins should have lids in place at all times.
In addition, you must take care to keep all pet food tightly sealed in containers.
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Remove Their Home
What looks like a broken branch to you looks a lot like a comfortable hiding place to a rat. Getting rid of hiding spots that appeal to rats is one of the first steps to proper removal. Rats can use the following things as shelter:
- Tree limbs
- Old cars
- Old appliances
- Wood piles
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Manage Your Shrubs
Any trees or shrubs that touch your home are like gateways for rats. Be sure to trim your vegetation back at least four feet from your home. Rats are unlikely to jump great distances.
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Set Traps
If you suspect rats are scurrying around in your home, it's important to trap them. There are a number of traps on the market that are safe for households with pets and children. Cages are the most common options used in homes today.
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Use Bait Outdoors
Sometimes rat removal comes in the form of elimination. If you're going to use toxic baits and poisons to address your rat issue, you should only use them outside your living spaces. Rats actually have the ability to spread poison inside your home and make you and your family sick. Only place bait is spots that cannot be accessed by children or pets.
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Think Locally
Rats rarely only attack one property at a time. If you're battling a rat infestation, there's a good chance your neighbors are also dealing with unwanted critters. Do your best to collaborate with neighbors to identify the source of the rat issue. You can also come up with a strategy for making your neighborhood an unattractive and hostile zone for rodents.
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Get Professional Help
It is necessary to call in the pros when rats appear in your home. Many do-it-yourself solutions don't bring success on a long-term basis. In fact, you may actually put yourself at greater risk because you'll have a false sense of security after putting down some traps.
Rats and mice can actually become more skillful at hiding once they've been detected. The last thing you want to do is experience a health emergency because you weren't aware that rats were living in the spaces where you and your family eat and sleep.
Pest experts are able to provide an accurate assessment of just how serious your rat problem is. Those same experts can come up with effective, long-term solutions for providing pest removal and making sure your property is a rat-free zone.
The Importance of Residential Rodent Removal
If you suspect that dangerous intruders are roaming around your property, you simply can't act quickly enough to get the situation under control. Every resident of your home is in danger of becoming sick or injured until proper Rodent pest control and removal has taken place.