Our service begins with a complete inspection of the home or business’s interior and exterior with identification of areas of activity. Recommendations will be given to aid in decreasing rodent harborage, habitat or foraging, as well as recommendations for areas where pheromones, droppings, nesting, refuse or other damage may exist. This will decrease habitat factors conducive to rat activity, stressing them and enabling a higher degree of success and speed in the trapping process. This is an important component of Integrated Pest Management Procedures (IPM) employed by our technicians.
The sealing of entry points, known as exclusion, is ideally done in conjunction with trapping of the resident population. For most other species, population cleanout should be done prior to the sealing of entry points. Rats are neophobic, however, meaning that they will fear and avoid new additions to their environment like traps and baits for hours, days, or even weeks. Food scarcity, overpopulation, cleanups and modifications of their environment can cause them to range further, disperse to new nests, or force them to explore newly introduced elements in their environments like traps and baits. This means that modifying their environment by sealing them inside stresses the rats, and is actually conducive to a more effective trapping or baiting program by partially mitigating their neophobic response. Exclusion measures will also prevent a reinfestation through existing entry points.
Disinfection is the final step in a rat remediation program, and can be a vital component in reducing future incursions as well as mitigating the dangers of disease posed by animal waste. Rats, like mice, leave pheromone trails in their wake. These trails are visible to other rats, and act like a road map to entry points, food and water sources, and previously established nests. Additionally, rats and their waste products are carriers of dangerous diseases such as hantavirus, leptospirosis, plague, salmonellosis and more.
Disinfection of their entry points, nesting locations and any waste products is ideal to limit both the pheromone trails and the diseases they carried. This is ideally done after the interior population has been cleaned out, but can also be done during setup anytime that waste is in a high contact area like a kitchen or child’s play area.
Bait stations are placed on the exterior of a structure, near likely entry points, and are serviced frequently on a seasonal or annual basis. This ensures the local population remains at a low level, and minimizes the potential for further damage and reinfestation. Given how difficult rats are to eliminate, a reinfestation is truly a worst case scenario and should be avoided at all costs.
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