Winter weather drives rodents on a search for food, water and shelter. Don’t let them find those opportunities in your home! These uninvited guests are not only a nuisance, they also contaminate food and can cause structural damage by chewing through wood and electrical wires (leading to possible house fires.) They also bring a variety of health hazards into your home including fleas, lice, ticks, and diseases such as hantavirus, leptospirosis, and salmonellosis. To prevent a rodent infestation before it starts, you need to perform an inspection of your home and employ various methods of exclusion.

 

Inspection

Even the tiniest of cracks can be an open door for rodents to gain access to your home—mice can fit through openings as small as a dime and rats can enter a hole as small as a quarter! Perform an inspection to identify potential entry points and gaps. Look for improperly sealed vents and drain pipes, cracks around doors and windows, and places in the foundation where utility lines enter your home. In addition to looking for access points, you should also look for droppings and chew marks (rats can chew through brick, cement, plastic, wood, aluminum, and lead ) around openings.

 

Exclusion

The next step after inspecting your home is to perform the necessary exclusion methods, including filling all cracks and holes, trimming vegetation, and seeking out standing water/high moisture areas. Fill cracks and holes with caulk, expanding foams, or use steel fabric mesh on larger openings. Trim limbs, branches, and shrubbery back six feet from your home and create a two-foot “buffer zone” perimeter around your property that is completely free of organic material (weeds, grass, mulch, fallen leaves, compost, and bark.) Standing water and leaks will attract a variety of pests, especially rodents, so make sure your gutters are free of debris and that you have no leaks in your outdoor faucets or pipes.

 

Cleanliness

Always clean counters and tables after eating, vacuum and clean floors regularly, and avoid leaving a sink full of dishes for any extended period, especially overnight. You should also eliminate access to potential food sources by sealing pantry products in plastic bags or containers, storing sweets and fruits in the refrigerator or in sealed bags or containers, and removing pet food from bowls (except during mealtimes.) Dispose all food items into your kitchen trash bin (not other trash receptacles throughout your home) and transfer your kitchen trash to a tightly sealed outdoor bin daily.

 

Professional Assessment, Removal, Clean Up, and Sanitation

If you have found evidence of rodents in or around your home you should immediately contact Wild Trappers. Our experienced technicians will perform an assessment of your home to determine the level of contamination and damage, remove all rodents from your property using live trapping methods, and seal off any openings they have been using to enter your home. We will then start our process of returning your home to a healthy, livable state by clearing contaminated materials and cleaning up infested areas, by properly disinfecting, sanitizing, and deodorizing. Neutralizing pheromones through proper sanitation is crucial. If these pheromones are not neutralized, rodents and other animals will be attracted to your home looking for protected places to nest or looking to feed on the animals that caused the infestation (such as snakes looking for rodents). Let us do the dirty work! Contact the professional team at Wild Trappers today. Request a FREE estimate, call (770) 828-9622, or email us today!