If you are performing professional pest services control in Seattle, or any of the surrounding communities, you are spending a great deal of time providing rodent control. Rat control, mouse control, and squirrel control.

There is a tremendous population of rats and mice in our area.  One of the main reasons we have so many rodents is our mild climate.  Our winters are not harsh and there is easy availability of water throughout the year.

As a society, we preserve green spaces, we install landscape materials that offer ideal nesting areas, such as rockeries, and we often surround our homes and work places with bushes, shrubs, and dense ground cover.  This allows the rodents to flourish on the outside for ten or eleven months each year.  We attach vines to our buildings and let bushes and trees grow up onto our eaves and roof surfaces which allow rodents easy access to our roof tops.

A typical rodent related inspection will also turn up a number of ground level access areas as well:  broken vents, ill fitting sub area access doors, gaps around utility lines, uncapped drain lines, and much more.

The number one reason rodents infest buildings has nothing do with available food or sanitation; it is the availability of access.  Rats will travel several city blocks from their nests to find food.  Mice need a great deal less food and less water and can usually find their food sources closer.  House mice, for instance like to live within ten to twenty feet from their food, but will also travel farther.

Where do they find food? Nuts, berries, seeds of all kinds, insects, and of course the vast banquet that humans provide.  In any one neighborhood they will find at least a couple of bird feeders, perhaps some improperly stored bird seed, typically one or more dog food dishes where someone thoughtfully fills full of way more food than their dog can eat and then leaves outside all day and / or all night. They will eat dog feces, and let’s not forget garbage cans with ill fitting lids, or compost piles.

Anyone can set out a trap or throw around rat poison.  Trained professional rodent control experts know how to set out the trap properly to increase the chances of the trap actually catching rodents.  They know what type of attractant to use on the trap and how much (non-professionals almost always use about ten times too much). There is a science to trapping, including not just trap placement but pre-baiting and multiple trap sets.

There is a tremendous amount of liability when it comes to putting out rat or mouse bait (rat poison).  State law requires that all rodenticides be placed in special tamper resistant stations that make it difficult for children, pets, and non-target animals to access the poison.  Poisoning your neighbor’s cherished family pet can invite huge law suits.

The most important and professional rodent control measure that can be offered by a service company however, is a full rodent inspection and exclusion report.  If a building is not rodent proofed it may not be possible to control the existing rodent population, and the rodents will always come back. 

This type of work is referred to as IPM or integrated pest management.  It can be thought of as pest prevention if it is performed before pests move in or before pests move back in.  WHy is this type of work necessary?

Rodents urinate wherever they go.  Their urine contains and great number of pheromones which are chemical markers that tell other rodents such information as: the sex, social status, stress status, and dietary status of the rodent who urinated. It is like a neon light flashing a huge vacancy sign that can be read by any passing future rodent.

Rodents will sometimes become ‘food specific’.  If rodents have been feeding on one food source for a period of time they may ignore other foods, including the attractants on traps, or the attractants used in poison baits.  As long as they have access to their preferred food source it may not be possible to control a given rodent population.

These are two very good reasons to make sure that your home is rodent proofed.  Rodent proofing is both an art and a science.  Most experienced contractors, handymen, and otherwise skilled homeowners totally botch rodent proofing.  Rats can enter a building through a gap the size of a quarter; mice need only an opening the size of a dime.  They easily chew through expanding foam and soft woods like cedar.  Steel wool, by itself, is not usually a good rodent proofing material either.

In the coming weeks I will be adding more posts, including blogs with step by step instructions on how to perform rodent exclusion properly.  Rodent proofing done early can save you thousands of dollars as it is becoming increasingly common for purchasers to require rodent clean-up and sanitation methods prior to buying homes and other real estate.  Replacing all the insulation under a home can be very expensive.

Stayed tuned.  In the meantime, if you have a rodent situation that you need help with – give us a call!