There’s nothing that can ruin your enjoyment of your own home quite like rats. Indeed, a rat infestation can cause more problems than most other infestations because rats can destroy property, introduce even more pests, and spread serious illnesses simultaneously. This means keeping rats at bay needs to be close to the top of your Sacramento pest control priority list.

How To Tell If It’s Rats On Your Property

A rat infestation can be hard to distinguish from other rodent infestations because all rodents have lots of things in common. However, you can usually tell the difference between rat and gopher or rat and squirrel infestations pretty easily. It’s rats and mice that are the hardest to distinguish between when you’re trying to determine what pest you have.

Rats and mice nest in similar ways, eat similar things, and even look similar. So you’ll really need to see the rodent to know whether or not you have mice or rats. Once you lay eyes on the rodent, it can be easy to tell. Rats are much larger than mice, they have proportionally smaller ears, and they have hairless tails. If you see a rodent that looks like this, it’s a rat.

Why Rats On Your Property Can Be Very Dangerous

The diseases rats carry are the main reason why rats on your property are dangerous. These rodents carry everything from salmonellosis to leptospirosis to hantavirus. These are serious bacterial and viral diseases that can lead to severe symptoms and hospitalization. They can sometimes even cause death. Rats can also spread disease by introducing infestations of external parasites like fleas and ticks to your property. These parasites, especially ticks, carry their own battery of potentially dangerous illnesses.

Rats are also highly destructive around your property. They have to constantly grind down their teeth because they never stop growing. This means rats chew through everything from wood to plastic and even plumbing and electrical wiring. Far from just a few torn-up components around your home, rats chewing on live wires can actually lead to house fires that burn down your house.

The Safe And Effective Way To Remove Rats In Sacramento County

Rat control can be quite difficult for homeowners to do on their own. This is because DIY products like poisons and snap traps are typically ineffective in the face of rats’ breeding speed. By the time you kill one rat, it has probably already replaced itself many times over.

And this is to say nothing of the danger inherent in some of these devices. For instance, rat poison can seriously injure or kill pets and small children who don’t know any better than to eat it. Snap traps can break fingers and cause serious pain. This is why you should contact a professional pest control service if you need to get rid of rats.

Helpful Tips To Prevent Future Rat Infestations On Your Property

If you want to prevent rat infestations, you can take measures to make your home less attractive:

• Cover all garbage cans on your property.
• Store pantry foods in airtight containers.
• Consider getting a cat or a ratter dog.
• Use fake owls or hawks around the outside of your home.
• Seal up all potential rodent entryways to your home.

Following these anti-rat measures can help make your home less attractive to these destructive and dangerous rodents. But if you wind up with rats in Sacramento anyway, call the rat experts here at Local Pest Solutions. We can safely and effectively remove the rats from your property in a way that won’t pose a threat to your kids or your pets. So give us a call or visit our contact page to get started today.