Roof rats are rodents who love to stay in attics and roofs. These thin, long rats have dark brown or black fur. They are skilled climbers and can easily scale utility lines, buildings, and trees. Roof rats live in groups. Once they find sources of food, they return to the group to being the good news. While these rats mainly eat nuts and berries, they can scavenge any food available. They can produce forty babies during their lifetime. Thus, early rodent pest control and intervention is vital.
How Dangerous are Roof Rats?
As with other pests or rodents, roof rats are disease carriers. They can contaminate surfaces and food with their urine and droppings. They can carry fleas, murine typhus, mites, hantavirus, and salmonella. Also, they can infect you with rat-bite fever, which is a bacterial infection. As roof rats quickly grow in numbers and can chew through a lot of building materials, they can render widespread structural damage. They may also cause electrical shorts or fires as they chew through wires.
Preventing a Roof Rat Infestation
To prevent roof rats from invading your home, find cracks or holes and seal them with silicon caulk. Then review potential lines of travel. In addition, you must trim trees, shrubs, and other landscaping away from the structure. Make there are no overhanging limbs that tough the roof of your home.
Because roof rats usually travel to find food, you can minimize your risk by properly storing food and food waste. Pantry items must be stored in sturdy, sealed containers. Garbage cans must be tightly covered. Also, fruits from fruiting trees must be picked up. Other ways to reduce your risk of a roof rat infestation include fixing leaky hoses, ensuring gutters are draining, and removing bird baths.
Treating a Roof Rat Infestation
When roof rats enter your home, eliminating them can be hard, particularly after they have established a colony. In general, DIY solutions can only reduce the population of roof rats, not eliminate it. Some of the ways to eliminate a roof rat infestation include the following:
- Baiting. This involves putting position at a strategic location like a feeding spot. Poison should be placed outside to ensure the poisoned rat won’t pass inside your house, which can leave you dealing with a noxious odor and the dead rat.
- Trapping. This involves using glue, an electronic trap, or a snap meant to lure, trap, or kill the house rat. Ideally, this is done indoors, so you can handle the dead rat before it can decay.
