How to keep those rats away

There is more to keeping a home than making it pleasing and cozy enough for comfortable living. Part of every household’s upkeep are the seasonal repairs, tedious cleaning, and believe it or not, pesky details like getting rid of creepy-crawlies lurking in the shadows within the cornners of the house.

Meticulously maintained or not, any home makes a perfect target for pests like rodents or rats. More often than not, homeowners are clueless that rodents have infested their properties until their handiwork gets noticed. It could be a gaping hole in the cabinet, bite marks on favorite furniture and electrical wires, or the most conspicuous work of all, a crevice in the wall.

It pays to know that these uninvited houseguests actuallly come in three types, the House Mouse, Roof Rat, and the Norway Rat. They are night crawlers, when their senses are sharper in search for food. Though not blessed with good vision, rodents are able to compensate this by having great sense of smell, touch, and hearing. They exist in colonies and are known to distinguish territories via urine or droppings.

The House Mouse is probably the most visible around the home. Small as they are, they thrive around people thus making any house a choice nest. Highly adaptable, House Mouse are hardest to catch because they move fast and are difficult to find. They are considered a prolific breeder because they can survive at any habitat with little or no water at all.

Unlike the House Mouse, the medium sized Roof Rat prefers hollow areas in ceilings. They have the innate ability to go up electrical wirings thus making them even more dangerous since a bite can result to a fire. Just as elusive, Roof Rats are most wary about traps and bait stations.

Found to be the most aggressive of the three is the Norway Rat. This large creature stays underground, in drainages and sewers. It feeds on leftovers from trash. Just knowing where these rodents dwell is enough to make our skin crawl.

Though most rodents move around in the dark and rarely seen throughout the day, it must be known that the damage they can do is not only confined in the home. Sometimes, the filth that comes with their existence can cause diseases that are just as fatal like plague, infectious jaundice, food poisoning, meningitis, rat bite fever, and rabies among others.

It is therefore important for homeowners to be more vigilant in preventing infestation of rodents. Learning about rodents should create an increased awareness and concern that traps and other forms of medication only provide temporary treatment but hardly keep them away for good. Still, the best way to go is to seek assistance from pest control professionals like PEST-AWAY to do the job.

Through an Integrated Pest Management scheme, PEST-AWAY uses advanced strategies to eliminate rodent infestation. Its Pest Management Specialists are well trained to give sound judgment and provide ready assessment in dealing with the infestation. First, they would identify the problem areas and the type of rodents that invaded the property. Second, they make use of such initial assessment to go about the elimination process.