Roof Rats can breed approximately 4 times a year and are what I affectionately call "heavy daters." So if you have one roof rat, chances are pretty high, that you actually have a lot more than you think.
One of the first signs that you might have a Roof Rat in your home is the sound of chewing, gnawing, scratching, or running in the ceiling or walls of your home. A visual inspection of your home by a licensed, certified pest control professional can confirm whether or not there are any signs of Roof Rat activity by the presence of rodent droppings, urine stains (which are phosphorescent under a black light), chewed wiring, rub marks on rafters and studs from lanolin in the rat's fur, tunnels in attic insulation and even the present of a nest.
Once it has been established that you do have Roof Rats in your home the next step is to have a pest control professional seal all the possible entry ways into the home from the exterior in order to prevent either entry by additional rats or escape by the ones that might be still in the attic or walls of your home. Now you may have gotten lucky and sealed all the rats out, but on the other hand you could have sealed them in.
At this point a trapping program is necessary to make sure any rats sealed in are caught and removed to prevent any changes of odor issues. Should any rats remain in your home after the sealing you are now in control and have a "captive" audience in that these remaining rats must eat the bait in the traps that will be installed inside your attic spaces.
The Roof Rats will no longer have access to food items such as citrus fruit, dog & cat food, vegetables, etc. available in your or your neighbor's yard. The elimination of these so called "competing food stuffs will greatly enhance the trapping success.
Your attic is now ready for the installation of strong rodent snap traps which are superior traps to the old style bale traps in that they have a much quicker action and result in less escapism from the traps. To prevent rats from dragging a trap into an unreachable, un-retrievable area the traps are secured in place with either a small steel wire or a strong zip tie.
Roof Rats are very shy and "cagey" animals that use extreme caution when approaching any new object recently introduced into their environment. The rats make take a few days to check out the traps by urinating or defecation close to them and circling the traps before they approach the traps to take the bait.
Traps will be checked frequently after installation and all trapped rats are properly removed from your property. The traps are then reset, re-baited and placed back into service for a period of approximately three weeks which is usually an adequate time period to capture the entire population of roof rats in an attic.
If you have suspicions that Roof Rats may be active at your home contact Invader Pest Management in Glendale, AZ for a free inspection and quote for treatments.
