How to attract rats

If, for some reason, you’re desperate to have some rats running around in your attic or walls, here are some good tips to attract them to your property:

• Leave food outside.

Keep that grill nice and grimy, leave trash bags outside, don’t clean up after your pets and leave any fallen fruit or berries on the ground. An easy food source is just what the rats are looking for.

• Cultivate piles of junk

Any stack of garden waste in your yard or general trash left outside can attract rats who are after things to build nests with or looking for a sheltered spot to hide.

• Don’t block up holes or trim overhanging branches.

If you really want to roll out the red carpet for your rodent friends, make sure you leave any cracks, holes or gaps in your exterior walls exactly as they are. Also, overhanging branches from nearby trees can make a handy bridge for rats to get across to your roof so be sure to leave those alone if you want to make it easy for the rats to pay you a visit.

Why rats in your home is not a good thing

All joking aside, having wild rodents in your home, and rats in particular, is not something to be desired. Rats can make a real mess of your home in places you can’t even see, chewing through wood, wiring, insulation and pipes. People and pets living in the property can also be exposed to rat urine and feces and rats can carry and spread a wide variety of diseases from salmonella to hantavirus.

If you see a rat or hear rodents in your walls, give a reliable and professional rat control company like H2 Pest Control a call. We are a family-owned business located in and servicing all of Utah County and Salt Lake County.

You might feel ashamed to have rats in your house but rest assured that H2 Pest Control’s technicians have seen it all and won’t judge you on what they find inside. Rats can make their way into practically any home and our main priority is to get you living a pest-free life. Take a look at our comprehensive rodent removal service for more information on how we can improve your quality of life.

So you’ve seen a little gray mouse darting through your yard. What’s the big deal, it’s only one mouse, right? Well, sorry to break it to you but where there’s one mouse, there’s likely more. And mice reproduce at an alarming rate so there might be many more in quite a short space of time.

While mice themselves are small and not particularly dangerous, the damage they can cause to your home and the diseases they can potentially spread make them pretty formidable pests. Over 20 million homes are infested by mice every year in the US and they can squeeze in through the smallest of gaps which is where the preventive services of H2 Pest Control come in.

H2 Pest Control has tackled many a mouse in our time so here’s the low-down on the cheese-loving little critters:

Everything you ever wanted to know about mice

• Do mice really like cheese?

Sure, mice will eat a nice bit of cheese if you leave it out but they actually prefer other food such as grains, fruit, peanut butter and even a nice chunk of chocolate, so that’s something to bear in mind if you’re trying to lure a small rodent into a trap.

• Can mice see in the dark?

Not very well, apparently. Mice are nocturnal but don’t have good vision during the day or at night. They do have excellent hearing and a great sense of smell, though, so that can help them keep one step ahead.

• Do mice teeth ever stop growing?

No! If mice, or any rodent for that matter, don’t constantly grind their teeth down, they have some that would grow into their brains! The best way to keep their teeth short and sharp is, of course, to chew and gnaw on things, like the exterior and interior of your house.

• Is it really possible to catch a horrible disease from a mouse?

Unfortunately, yes it is. OK, it’s not that likely, but it happens. Mice are generally afraid of humans so you probably won’t get bitten by one but you can catch things by coming into contact with their urine or droppings or other things they have contaminated without you knowing.

The CDC lists 11 diseases that can be directly transmitted from rodents to humans, including rat-bite fever, hantavirus and plague. There is also a list of 15 diseases indirectly transmitted by rodents, for example Lyme disease or murine typhus which humans can catch from infected ticks or fleas. Either way, there’s a risk of catching something nasty if you have mice in or around your home so for the sake of everyone living there, get a professional pest control company in to solve your problem. If you’re in the Utah County or Salt Lake County areas, give H2 Pest Control a call and our fully licensed technicians will come to your aid with our comprehensive mouse control service.