Rodents are a big problem in restaurants and homes across Oklahoma. Mice and rats can find their way in and wreak all sorts of havoc. They carry diseases, and they can damage food and homes. These small mammals are very destructive, and it’s important that you keep them out of your house.
Calling a good Broken Arrow exterminator can be the first step in dealing with them. Let’s take a good hard look at mice and rats and how we can deal with them.
Both mice and rats are big problems in Oklahoma. They can make their way into your house through a couple different means. The number one way we found that mice find their way in is through the large garage door. There’s a soft seal at the bottom of that large door that they can work their way under. Often, many of these doors have other gaps around the outside edges that they can make their way through as well.
Mice have the ability to manipulate their body in any way they need to get through a hole or gap. If they can get their head through a hole, they can get into a building. This means a hole or crack the size of a dime is small enough for a mouse to find their way through, and a hole about the size of a quarter is enough for a rat to find its way in.
Once it gets into the garage, there are usually plenty of places for it to hide. Many people have clutter and other things in their garage where they can hide behind and underneath.
Usually cold weather pushes these rodents into your home. The hot water heater found in the closet in your garage is a great place for them to find heat. It also has a chimney that goes all the way through to the roof. That means these rodents can go up the chimney and into the attic space. There’s plenty of insulation up there to stay warm and to create space for nests.
So once they set up shop in your attic, they’re gonna have lots and lots of babies. Mice and rats are very prolific and will multiply rapidly. Once they do, they need to feed these young, and so they’ll make their way down the insides of walls. They’ll start to scratch, claw, and chew at the drywall at the bottom in order to make their way inside.
These open, hollow walls are also often echo chambers that can make the chewing sound extremely loud. Many people often think, “Oh, well, we have a larger animal in the wall,” when actually it’s just a mouse chewing at the bottom corner.
Once they break in, that’s when they’re gonna try to find their way to a food source such as your pantry. They’ll start chewing through bags and plastic, eating the food, and carrying it back to their young. You’ll often see droppings and a very fast mouse scurry out of the corner of your eye.
If you’re having mice in your home, mice will actually urinate everywhere they go and leave droppings as they run. This gives them something to smell as they run through the house. They can follow these trails of urine so they can retrace their steps anytime they want to get around.
Killing mice and rats can be difficult. Many people will run to the hardware store and get snap traps in order to eliminate the problem. Traps are slow. They only kill them one at a time and need to be cleaned out each time they go off.
Mice and rats reproduce so quickly that often this is not fast enough to take care of the problem. That’s where rodenticides really shine. Over-the-counter rodenticides can be slower because some require multiple feedings before they act.
Professional pest control gives us options for selecting and placing rodenticides appropriately and monitoring the treatment. Any rodenticide can pose risks to pets or wildlife if misused, so proper product selection, secure placement, follow-up, and removing carcasses when possible are important ways to reduce that risk.
If you think you’re having problems with mice or rats, it’s important to contact a good Broken Arrow exterminator as soon as you can. They’ll be able to eliminate the problem for you and get this taken care of. TermMax Pest Control is a great solution, and we’d love to help you. Give us a call today.
