Discovering that a rat has gotten into your home can be stressful. Professional treatments are often necessary for total rodent control. Bay Pest provides effective and affordable pest control in the Bay Area to protect your home and family from rodents.
Physical Characteristics of Rats: How To Identify A Rat
If you see a rat somewhere, whether in your house or on the street, you can probably identify it easily as either a mouse or a rat. Knowing which can be the key to eliminating an infestation, so it’s important to distinguish between rats and mice. Rats are much bigger than mice and tend to have a more elongated body shape. While mice are usually between 2 to 4 inches long with rounded bodies, rats can be between 6 to 10 inches long—plus another 6 to 8 inches in tail length. Roof rats are likely to infest upper parts of buildings, such as attics, while Norway rats like basements and lower floors of homes.
Rats are good at hiding and prefer to stay out of sight, which means that you might not see them even if there’s an active infestation in your home. However, they’ll still leave behind evidence of their presence. You might find gnaw marks on furniture, capsule-shaped droppings, footprints, and grease spots on walls from the rats’ fur. You’ll almost certainly notice damage to food products and packaging as rats scavenge for food.
Rat-Borne Diseases: Common Illnesses Transmitted By Rats
Because rats often get into your food, they can transmit diseases without touching you. Some of the diseases rats carry are leptospirosis, rat-bite fever, tularemia, salmonellosis, and jaundice. Rats can also bring fleas and ticks into homes.
Another issue with rat infestations is the risk of property damage. Rats claw and chew through materials to make their nests. They might destroy insulation, chew through electrical cables, and make holes in walls. Rodent damage is usually repairable, but it can significantly impact your life.
Rat Prevention Tips: Eliminating Attractants And Sealing Entry Points
Getting rid of rats isn’t always easy since these Bay Area rodents will avoid you as much as possible. However, there are steps you can take to make your home less attractive to rats and avoid infestations in the first place.
Try these rat prevention tips to minimize your chances of developing a rat infestation in your home:
- Keep firewood and piles of yard debris at least several feet away from your house.
- Seal any holes in the walls both inside and outside of your home.
- Fix any moisture issues and leaks around the house.
- Store food in sealed containers with lids.
- Dispose of trash properly in receptacles with animal-proof lids.
Piles of firewood and yard debris can be harborage sites for rats, meaning they’ll live in those piles until they get into your house. Maintaining distance between potential harborage sites and your home can help prevent infestations. You should also cover any holes in the walls since rats will squeeze through even small openings to get inside a building or inside the wall itself. Excess moisture, pooled water, and food can all attract rats. Make sure to repair any leaks and keep your food—and food waste—put away.
If you try all these things and still see signs of rats around your house, call a professional pest control company for rodent removal and exclusion work in the Bay Area.
Professional Rat Control Services: The Benefits Of Expertise
Bay Pest provides professional and effective rat control in the Bay Area. To clear the entire infestation, we use multiple treatment methods. On an initial service visit, we set traps and perform exclusion work to make sure more rats can’t get inside. Then, we’ll return every two weeks until all the rats are gone. We believe pest control is a team effort; once you’re on our team, we won’t stop until the job is done. Reach out today for help with rats and to learn more about our residential and commercial pest control services in the Bay Area.