Houston Rodent Control

The tell-tale sign of a rodent infestation is the sound of squeaking and scuttling in your attic or in your walls. If you hear these noises, check your attic floor for droppings or urine stains. If the droppings are small, you likely have a rat or mouse infestation. If the droppings are larger, you likely have wildlife creatures such as squirrels, raccoons, or possums.

Larger rodents enter homes through openings along the roof line, eaves, and vents of your home. If you hear squeaking and notice holes in your outside air vents, eave siding, or along your roof line, that’s a surefire sign that rodents have found their way inside.

•  Norway rats, despite what the name suggests, are indigenous to Texas. You’ll often find them digging holes underneath your driveway, on the side of your house, and under your home’s foundation.
• Roof rats originally came to Texas with the first European settlers. They like to climb up tall plants and drainpipes to get into your attic and make it their home.

Rats and other rodents are incredibly resourceful animals. They can squeeze themselves into some of the tightest holes to make their way inside. Some rodents, such as squirrels, have opposable thumbs that are ideal for grabbing onto weak points and ripping through siding. All rodents have incredibly strong teeth, too. It’s very common to find a hole in your attic that was made by a rat biting straight through flimsy materials.

Once rodents find their way into your home, they quickly begin to wreak havoc. They’ll nest in your attic, your walls, or even underneath your foundation. Rats and mice are so good at hiding that they can remain unseen for months at a time. At night, when everyone has gone to bed, they will help themselves to whatever they can get their claws on and sink their teeth into. They’ll tear apart your roof, sheet-rock, and insulation in search of a safe place to sleep, water to drink, and food to eat. They’ll chew through electrical wires and cut their teeth on your pipes. And worst of all, many carry diseases and spread them wherever they go.

While rats, mice, and other rodents are generally scared of humans, they’re intelligent enough to know when we’re around and take steps to avoid being seen. Rats have a keen sense of smell that alerts them to your presence, and so are usually long gone by the time you enter an area where they were scavenging. While you likely won’t catch them in the act of rooting around your things, you will know they were there by what they leave behind. Rats are greasy, oily animals who will leave grease marks and oily stains on your walls, drain pipes, and anywhere else they climb and enter your home. Rats also have no issue answering the call of nature wherever they are. Your pantry, your insulation, your countertops—your whole home is a bathroom for a rat.

When rats relieve themselves, they leave behind all sorts of diseases in their urine and droppings that have the potential to get your family sick. The worst one of all is hantavirus, a highly contagious virus that you get from interacting with rat urine, rat droppings, or rat nesting materials. If you go inside a rat-infested attic and disturb these droppings, or you suffer a water leak in your home that soaks areas that have rat urine or rat feces on them, the hantavirus can be atomized into the air that you breathe and quickly infect you.

Once infected with hantavirus, you will eventually begin to suffer flu-like symptoms: fever, muscle aches, fatigue, difficulty breathing, chills, and more. Unfortunately, there is no cure for hantavirus. Like other types of virus, you just have to ride out the infection and be careful not to infect the rest of your family.