A Guide To Safe And Effective Rodent Control In McAllen

Rodents are night dwellers. Their senses help them navigate in pitch darkness. While you're asleep, they are busy. If they're active outside your home, that's one thing, but when they get busy on the inside, that is another thing altogether. Join us today as we look at how rodent problems begin, how you can catch them early, and what you can do to stop them. We'll also explain the process of evacuating rodents from your home.

If you're currently having trouble with a rodent problem and need professional rodent control in the McAllen area, remember that we're here to assist you with all your pest concerns. BUGWORKS Termite & Pest Control uses advanced pest control solutions to get results. Rodent pest control is a process, and our technicians have extensive training in field-tested methods. Connect with us today.

Signs Of Rodents: How To Recognize And Act To Promptly

What does a rodent problem look like at first? Not much, actually. You're really going to have to look for it. Rodents sneak around in dark places and tight spaces—places that are hard for you to inspect. Let's start outside your home and work our way indoors for some clues that indicate you have a rodent problem in your house.

Exterior Droppings:

Rats and mice leave black fecal matter about the size of rice grains. You'll find these around plants in your landscaping and underneath structures. The easiest location to find them is along your foundation wall and around utilities. Rodents commonly enter through gaps around pipes and wire conduits.

Exterior Damage:

There are many forms of damage that provide evidence of rodent activity. You may open the hood of your vehicle and see that the insulation is deteriorating. Rodents gather this material for their nests. You may notice small holes in exterior trash bags. Rodents find meals in trash bags. You may notice tiny openings in your home. A full-grown rat can fit through a hole about the size of a quarter. If a rodent can fit its skull through, it can get its body through.

Interior Noises:

Scratching and bumping in walls can alert you to an issue. But don't count on rats or mice to make noises you can hear. They're both quiet as a mouse. But not so quiet that your dog or cat can't hear them. Watch your pets for suspicious behavior.

Interior Smells:

Rats and mice leave urine to mark their environments. Their urine creates a scent map for them to use to navigate in the dark. If you check your home for rodents and smell urine, that is a good sign that trouble is afoot.

Interior Droppings:

Rodents leave their waste as they explore your home from top to bottom. You may find droppings in the backs of your cabinets and drawers, on shelves, along baseboards, in hollow structural voids, on insulation, and more.

Interior Damage:

Rodents can damage many things in your home. They'll destroy insulation, tear up wallpaper, eat holes in clothing, pull stuffing out of couch cushions, and do other undesirable things to collect the materials for their nests. They'll also create holes near the floor in hidden places and underneath cabinet overhangs. You'll need to get down low to see this damage.

Grease Marks:

As rodents run along baseboards, boxes, and other things, they leave a greasy, grimy smudge. Clean up dark marks like these and check back to see if more appear.

If you catch rodent activity in your home, what can you do about it? They hide in hard-to-reach places, like your wall voids. We're going to give you everything you need to know. But before we look at how to get rodents out of your walls, let's quickly look at why you should.

Rodents On The Property Is A Major Risk

How do you see rats and mice? Do you think of them as harmless woodland creatures? If you do, you're not alone. Many people consider rats and mice harmless. It is understandable. Mice rarely interact directly with humans, and it is rare for rats as well. But there are indirect ways these animals can present a major risk in your home:

• Rodents chew on wires. They don't realize that live current passes through those wires or that they can get electrocuted. They also don't know that cutting wires can cause a fire—but you should know this. Experts believe 20 to 25 percent of fires caused by "unknown" factors are likely rodent-related.
• Rodents pick up disease-causing bacteria in dumps, garbage piles, dumpsters, sewers, and other unsanitary environments. They spread these as they shed their hair and touch things with their hair.
• Rodents often eat unsanitary things, which brings organisms into their guts. For this reason, the droppings left by rodents are considered a health concern. You should always avoid contact with animal feces, particularly rodent droppings.
• It is also essential to understand that droppings can dry and create airborne disease agents.
• Rodents create holes that allow moisture, rainwater, and mold to enter. If black mold takes root, it can initiate a health problem.

As you can see, a rodent problem can present a significant risk. That is why effective rodent control is so important. Let's look at how you can keep rodents from entering your home and causing problems.

Five Effective Rodent Exclusion Tips

When rodents look to enter your home, it is essential that they don't see any holes, no matter how small. A rat or mouse isn't likely to chew a hole through sound timber. It doesn't know that your home contains food. What typically happens is a rat or mouse finds a small opening and an opportunity to harbor within. Rodents live in tree cavities and logs in the wild. A wood hole in your home is the potential entry to a nesting site. Perform these helpful maintenance steps:

1. Inspect your utilities and seal gaps around your pipes, wires, and PVC conduits. Expanding foam or caulking materials can easily patch these. Use hardware cloth to create a better barrier if more control is needed. You should also fill in any wood cavities or gaps and patch cracks in your foundation.
2. Inspect your exterior doors and make sure your weatherproofing is up to snuff. Rodents often exploit damaged weatherstripping and sweeps. The simple solution is to replace them and remove even the tiniest gaps.
3. Make sure you don't have conditions that are favorable for rodent activity. A rodent gravitates to dense vegetation, voids underneath exterior structures, wood piles, brush piles, junk piles, clutter, and debris.
4. Address food sources near your home. Rodents eat seeds, nuts, and fruit that fall on the ground, garbage, and scraps around outdoor cooking areas. Remove bird feeders, clean up nuts and fruit, attach rodent guards to tree trunks, keep trash covered, and use sanitation to keep rodents away.
5. Block access to your roof. Snip tree branches that touch your roof. Attach rodent guards to wires or pipes that lead to your roof. Block access to your downspouts so rodents can't climb up. Remove vines from your exterior.

These effective exclusion tips will help you keep rats and mice out of your home. But what do you do if you have a rodent infestation already? Removing rodents and excluding them from your house is a process. Let's look at how the technicians at BUGWORKS Termite & Pest Control tackle the issue.

Contact The Professionals For Total Rodent Control For Your Home

It pays to get professional assistance with rodent control. The process is complex. At every stage, rodents can outsmart you if you don't understand why those critters do the things they do. Here are the steps we take and why our technicians get results:

• We start with some exclusion work. This step allows rodents to leave as we apply rodent control in the interior.
• We evaluate your rodent problem and consider ways to address the factors that have led to the infestation. Doing so allows us to drive the rodents out.
• We use traps to collect rodents indoors. Rodents are smart, so our technicians leverage their training and experience to apply and bait that traps appropriately.
• When we believe the home is mostly secure, we patch the remaining openings to keep rodents from entering.
• We continue to capture any rodents inside and perform inspections to check for rodent activity. The methods we use catch subtle signs of activity and ensure no unwanted conditions are present, such as little mouse babies separated from their mothers.

You can count on BUGWORKS Termite & Pest Control when you need McAllen rodent control services. Rodent control requires a systematic application of products and strategies. If you're dealing with rodents in McAllen, you can count on our team to tackle this complicated job. While we are known for our termite control, you'll find that we provide the highest quality rodent control, as well as exclusion services. Contact us today for service.