mouse crawling As Richmond residents, we love showing our RVA pride. It’s a great place to live, and that encourages our efforts when taking care of our homes and properties. However, with dozens of tasks to cross off of the home maintenance list every weekend, rodent control tends to fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, homeowners who don’t get out in front of a mouse or rat infestation typically regret it, especially once they realize how many problems these rodents bring.

Home Damage And Health Dangers: The Mouse And Rat Specialty

With all of the issues that you have to deal with on your property already, you do not want to have to deal with damage from mice and rats as well. However, they can do a lot more harm to your house than you think. Mice and rats may be slightly different in size and color, rats being the larger and darker of the two rodents, but they do have a few things in common: namely, their large front teeth. These incisors are always growing, forcing mice and rats to have to chew incessantly on whatever is in front of them. They’ll chew on anything from wood to drywall, clothing, piping, wiring, and more, often causing hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage in your home.

Furthermore, mice and rats are not only damaging to your home, but they’re also incredibly dangerous to your health. For the most part, they like to hang out in some of the worst areas in town, searching for wasted human food in sewers, landfills, and dumpsters. When they leave these places in search of more food, the bacteria they collect will travel with them, all the way into your home. This puts you at risk of serious diseases, like salmonella or E. coli, when mice and rats wind up crawling around in your stored food and meal-preparation areas. Be careful when cleaning up their urine and feces as well, as accidentally ingesting these toxic droppings can also make you very sick.

Attempting To Keep Them Out: An Exercise In Futility?

Obviously, with the severe health threats and home damage on the line, you’ll want to focus on keeping them out. However, this is a lot easier said than done. You see, another common attribute these rodents share is their ability to squeeze into small spaces. So, they’ll find loose roof shingles to slide through, or shimmy their way in under exterior doors pretty easily. Plus, whatever cracks and crevices around the foundation of your home, even if they’re not wide enough initially, won’t stop them for long. If it’s their only way in, they’ll chew through almost anything to widen the gap enough to squeeze through.

Once they’re in, the prevention problems only get worse. Yet another common quality these two rodents share is their high rate of reproduction. As extremely prolific animals, mice and rats can breed new litters in just a few weeks, making them very hard to keep up with. So, you might think you can eliminate an infestation with your strategically placed poison or traps, but they’ll just keep breeding more within your walls. Homeowners who rely on these DIY methods rarely eradicate an entire infestation, so they continue to allow themselves to be exposed to the detrimental health effects and home damage.

Sometimes, if you want something done right, you can’t do it yourself. Rather than wasting time and money on dangerous traps and hazardous poison, why not go with a solution that works the first time? The safest, most effective way to deal with rodent infestations is to call in the experts - Pestmaster® Services - Richmond, VA.