Signs of Rats
It goes without saying that nobody likes a rat, well there may be a few people on the planet that enjoy these animals, and there are many varieties of rodents that can be domestic house pets, but for the sake of this article, we are going to be talking about wild rats. Some people may find these types of rats to be cute, but the majority of people are not too fond of these critters, and wouldn’t mind never having to deal with them in their daily lives. These wild rats also come in a variety of species and sizes, ranging from smaller roof rats to large Norwegian rats, which are the largest variety that thrive in the Melbourne, Palm Bay, Viera, and Brevard County areas. We can tell you that although these different species may have slightly different appearances, their behavior and habits are quite similar across the spectrum; they invade people’s homes and businesses, causing disturbances and destruction on many different levels, all leading to annoyed homeowners and business owners.
Although every living thing has its place in the ecosystem and rats certainly do have their place on the totem pole, they are in fact overpopulated, classified as a nuisance, and are indeed showing no signs of using prophylactics to slow their population growth. This coupled with the large amount of new construction and land clearing occurring in Brevard County in recent years makes for a perfect storm where more houses than ever are being affected by these little critters living in the attics of people’s homes. Although these animals have their place, we believe that their place is not meant to be in your attic or in your house living above your heads, and we want to discuss in this post some common signs of rats in your attic; what to look for and what you can do if any of these signs pertains to you and your property.
Before we get started on listing common signs of rats in the attic, we always stress that you leave wildlife removal to professionals in your area, we do not want anyone trying to do this on their own, risking life and limb when most of the time, there are affordable solutions that professionals can offer. We hope this will be educational to the public and we look forward to posting more material on these matters, so without further ado, let’s get started.
Noises in the Attic?
This may sound like a no brainer but you would be surprised, and so we must talk about this common sign first and foremost. The attic in your home has a specific purpose, which is to help insulate the home and provide and structure for the roof and can also be used for storage, but attics do not make noise on their own. Yes, with any home, there will be creaking of wood beams, but the noises we are talking about are scratching, clawing, and scurrying types of noises coming from above your head in your attic space, this most certainly means that there is something living up there that should not be. There are many types of wildlife animals in the Melbourne, Palm Bay areas that can gain access to an attic, but the most common critter is definitely rats, and they make a ton of noise so for most people dealing with them in the attic, it’s pretty evident something is up there.
One thing to consider when listening for noises is what time of day the noises are occurring, rats are nocturnal and thus sleeping during the day. Rats become active around dusk and will remain active throughout the night until the go to sleep around dawn. Most people will notice the noises when trying to go to sleep at night but will be unable to because of the clawing and scurrying occurring above their heads, this is a good sign that you have a critter in your attic and it is time to call a professional wildlife removal company.
What does the Attic look like?
Imagine that you have been hearing noises in the attic or maybe you are reading this article and we have scratched your curiosity; you want to take a peak in your attic and explore a little. The first thing we will say is be careful, make sure you understand how to walk in an attic before you go up there or you may end up falling through your own ceiling and we do not want anyone getting hurt, the next thing to make sure of is proper lighting, whether there are lights installed in your attic or you need to bring a flashlight, it is important to have ample lighting before going up there to avoid falling or injury. Once this is taken care of we can go have a look and see what we find. When rats get into an attic and start to set up their homes, there are habits that they form and certain paths that they prefer to follow over time, and this will result in paths and tunnels that will form in your insulation as they travel these routes over and over. When looking at the insulation in your attic, look for areas that are matted down, or have tunnels and burrowing showing in different sections, rats are the only animals that do this so this will be a sure sign that rats are in the attic space. Another typical sign of rats in the attic space is droppings that they leave behind, rats are not known to be particularly clean animals and they produce a large volume of droppings every night, so if there are rats in your attic, you will see droppings. These droppings can be on top of the insulation or below it so it is sometimes important to move some insulation around and try to get a good look underneath. One last thing about rats is that they are little explorers and so the evidence they leave behind will be spread out throughout the attic rather than clustered in one general location. This means that you should not have to search the deep dark corners of your attic to figure out if they are up there, it should be readily visible throughout the entire attic space if you have any of these critters living up there. Again, we must stress to be careful whenever up in the attic, and if you have any hesitation of walking or crawling up there, do not hesitate to call a professional wildlife removal company and have them come perform an inspection, which is usually free of charge with an attached estimate for different services, this will always be your best bet on confirming that there are critters or no critters in the attic.
Exterior Indicators
The last topic we wanted to put in this article has to do with what the outside of a home or business looks like, now we must say that just because your home or business has any of these signs, this does not necessarily mean that you have animals in your attic, but it does mean that you are susceptible to home invasion from these critters and you should definitely fix the problems before something does get inside. The first thing we will discuss is your air conditioning system, these units are usually placed on the outside perimeter of the home and have a copper line carrying Freon that one way or another makes its way into the interior structure of the house, what we are focused on is the penetration point of that Freon line. These areas where Freon lines go into home are often times left exposed to rat entry as well, whether an open chase box going through the soffit, or a hole in the stucco that has just had some expanding foam put in it, if a Freon line can get into the home, there a rat most certainly can also get it. Not all ac units are installed this way so whenever doing an inspection of the ac system, look to see how the copper line actually gets into the home and this should indicate if repairs or animal proofing is require to seal this area. The next biggest thing we want to discuss is the soffits installed on the under eaves of the home. Soffits are very important to help ventilate the attic; they allow excess moisture and heat to escape the attic while simultaneously guarding against driven rain soaking your insulation in the attic. Unfortunately, most soffits these days are constructed with thin aluminum or plastic vinyl, which do not stand a chance against a determined rat with a set of teeth that can chew through about anything. If you have any damaged or missing soffit on your house, then the first thing you must do is get this repaired or replaced. Once this is completed, it will be necessary to do a full inspection of the soffits, looking for anything that touches them; this could be tree branches, bushes, cable wires, or ac chase boxes. These all allow a rat the chance to climb up and begin chewing on the soffits until a hole big enough is made for them to gain entry. These areas can be repaired with different types of sheet metal or trim coil installed which rats are unable to chew through. We must say again, that many soffit areas are hard to get to and some require roof access for inspection, always call a professional wildlife removal company to perform these in depth inspections of the soffits as they are trained in what to look for and have the necessary tools and equipment to get to some of these hard areas.
Conclusion
There are more signs that you may have rats in your attic and as we release more educational material on these topics, we will start to cover more. This article focused on some of the bigger and more common problems that homeowners in the Brevard County area are facing and we wanted to start here to help you get started. We hope this article has been educational to whoever has the opportunity to read it and we must always stress that if you have any of these signs around your home or business that you leave wildlife removal to the professionals. We can’t wait to release more information to inform the public on this ever increasing problem facing our communities and we thank you all for your support and comments on our material.