With the early spring, there are loads of things we should handle so that our home is prepared for a new season. One of the things on the list of the must is the prevention of rats and mouse infestations in your home, basement, garage, or anywhere near your living space. Mice and rats can spread numerous diseases, and with them in your home space, the risk of catching these is dangerously increased. However, all of us want to deal with this problem in the safest possible way and avoid chemical pollution in our homes for a couple of days. Hence, here are some suggestions on how to deal with rodent infestation in your home in the safest possible way.
Contact Professionals
Always the number one piece of advice when it comes to rodents and rodent infestation. Sometimes, we as individuals, do not have all the necessary resources and materials needed to deal with an infestation. Professionals dealing with pests are used to these situations and know how to handle them. Pests like rats can be quite problematic to deal with if we take their size into consideration, and professionals know the places where they usually hide and make their nests. So, when you notice the first signs of unwanted guests or you assume that they might have accommodated themselves in your home, contact the professionals for checkups and some further steps.
How to Remove Current Occupants on Your Own?
Here are a couple of classics when it comes to removing mice and rats from your home and two of the most popular methods are trapping and baiting. Speaking of traps, the best possible solution is to purchase snap-style traps, which are designed to kill rodents instantly. When it comes to baiting, you must make sure that these baits are not a potential risk for your children and pets, and position them in the places where you first notice droppings and gnaw marks. Third, an unpopular solution is poison. There are food-shaped mice and rats poison that will cause their death. However, putting them in places exposed to your pets and children might poison them or even cause fatal endings.
Clean Your Yard
Pests do not inhabit your home directly, on the contrary, they come from the outside and the clutters you might have in your yard. Once you declutter and clean up your yard, you are halfway through the problem. Rats are huge fans of debris and they tend to make their nests in these piles so that access to your home is much clearer without you even knowing all of this. Hence, it is mandatory for you to declutter your yard and remove all the debris piles before you move to the next step. The second step is to plant shrubs and bushes 3 feet from any buildings. Even though they are your yard’s decoration, they make safe places for rodents.
When cleaning your yard, you should consider eliminating potential outdoor food sources. Outdoor areas like gardens and different kinds of fruit trees can attract rats where they find their food sources and cause double damage. Therefore, one of the things you should do regularly is to pick up fallen fruit and clean fallen leaves and branches which make a perfect hiding spot for these pests. Another way of guarding your trees against rats is by placing a sheet of metal at least 2 feet high around the tree’s trunk. Plants from a family of mints do no good to rats and will effectively keep them out of your house. Additionally, you can spray the urine of predators such as foxes which will serve as a deterrent to rats. Normally, you will find this in the garden store in both liquid and powder form.
Adopt a Cat
Cats like catching mice and fighting rats, and they almost always win this game. So, by picking up a new friend from your local animal shelter, you will do a good deed and will terminally solve the problem with rats and other rodents. How so? Basically, cats should not be skillful at catching mice at all, their scent solely will work as a deterrent.
Rodents are definitely one of the most persistent pests and dealing with them is a complete headache. If there are no professionals who will solve this problem quickly and efficiently, there are some things you can do in the meantime that will do the job. Most of the steps you can undertake are preventions which will solve the rat problems long-term.
